


Order of Battle

by Shadow2Serenity



Series: The Hammerfall Chronicles [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Family Drama, Gen, Pacific Campaign, Railroads at War, Submarine Warfare, White Collar Crime, World War II, home front
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 12:34:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25849606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow2Serenity/pseuds/Shadow2Serenity
Summary: A working-class family from upstate New York gives their all to their homeland's efforts to win World War II.In mid-1942, the heat of combat in the Pacific Theatre rises. The eldest offspring of the Hachman family takes the fight to the enemy with his submarine, battling enemy forces from Midway Island to the south coast of Japan. Meanwhile, his younger sister, a locomotive maintainer for the Boston & Maine Railroad, and their younger brother, a locomotive fireman, discover that their self-serving division superintendent is making an illicit deal with an engine manufacturer - an underhanded deed that causes needless risk to the lives of submariners like their brother and his shipmates.Their youngest sister has a private battle of her own to fight. Oddly behaved but highly intelligent, she has an unusual fixation on aviation that inspires her to turn her abnormally sharp eyes to the sky as a civil defense observer - much to her parents' disapproval.In 1942, no end of the war is in sight. From the Hudson Valley to the depths of the Pacific, every member of the Hachman clan will do what they must to make safe the future of the world - even if it means the ultimate sacrifice.
Series: The Hammerfall Chronicles [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875700
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	1. The First Day

_29 May 1942_

_From: Commander Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet_

_To: Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Hammerjaw_

_Subject: OPERATIONAL ORDER FOR DEFENSE OF MIDWAY_

_Based on verified U.S. Pacific Fleet intelligence information, the Imperial Japanese Fleet is known to be heading toward Midway Island with intent to invade and occupy. The enemy order of battle consists of an initial striking force comprised of four aircraft carriers, an escorting force of battleships, cruisers and destroyers, and logistical support ships; an invasion force, comprised of battleships, heavy cruisers, destroyers, troop transports, and support ships; and main battle force comprised of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers to repel any possible retaliation by U.S. surface fleet. Intelligence expects the enemy to launch their attack on 4 June at 0700 local time from a bearing of 325 degrees, at a distance of 175 miles._

_Obtain full allowance of torpedoes, fuel, and provisions at Pearl Harbor and depart on the morning of 1 June. Deploy to patrol station 175 miles from Midway Atoll bearing 335 degrees. You will seek and report contact with the enemy carrier striking force. If the opportunity presents itself, you will engage and destroy enemy fleet units._

_Signed,_

_Comdr. E.K. Walker, USN_

_Operations Officer, Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet_

_Welcome to your first day of hell,_ William Hachman thought to himself as he swung upright on his bunk, careful to avoid striking his head on the bunk above. With one hand he rubbed his sleep-bleary eyes and with the other he reached over to his small work desk, fingering the calendar on the corner. In the dim red light he squinted at the calendar as he tore yesterday's page from it and leant over the edge of the desk, more out of habit than curiosity.

June 4, 1942.

This was the day the powers had made, a day of reckoning if history was ever going to name one.

Hachman paused for a moment before he arose, listening and feeling for the slight vibration under him. The diesels were grumbling mutedly at low revolutions. The _Hammerjaw_ was still on the surface, then, ambling along at two-thirds speed - if it was in its assigned position, it was about 175 miles northwest of Midway Island. Right under the bows of that onrushing Japanese striking force.

_God help us all if Admiral Nimitz is wrong._

The thought prevailed in Hachman's mind as he pulled on his uniform and procured his wristwatch from its usual spot in front of the calendar, studying it under the red light. It was 0400, the beginning of the end of nighttime, just enough time to do his business, ascend to the bridge and take his morning star sights. Possibly, the thought occurred to him, even catch sight of a Japanese destroyer ranging ahead of the carrier force. Then, finally, find out if Captain Stewart was just as merciless with the enemy as he was with his own crew.

Hachman looked behind him at Arnold Brill, the gunnery and torpedo officer lying in the upper bunk, and smiled to himself with an amused shake of his head. Brill was widely regarded as the deepest sleeper on the boat - nothing less than a dive-bomber attack could wake him up. No worries about disturbing his slumber with uniform-donning and equipment-grasping. Hachman emerged from their shared cabin, runt of a postage stamp's litter, and turned forward, making a beeline for the officers' head in the forward torpedo room.

He squeezed his boxer's bulk through the small doorway into a quiet compartment indeed. The bunks slung above and around the room's ten ominous Mark 14 torpedoes were all occupied, but Hachman could barely hear a snore from any of them. Near the entrance to the officers' head, Raymond Serino, owner of a billet unique to submarines, stood leaning against the tail of one of the reload torpedoes, chatting mutedly with Chip Gunderson, the _Hammerjaw_ 's chief torpedoman. Serino himself, a chief boatswain's mate, held the lofty position of Chief of the Boat, the senior enlisted man on board who oversaw the _Hammerjaw_ 's seventy crewmen with a heavy but fair hand.

Gunderson bent over the twin propellers of the reload torpedo with a clean cloth and a file. It wasn't a surprising sight - he was a nitpicker, and anything he saw on a torpedo that looked out of place to him, he wouldn't let the water even touch it in that condition. Hachman was pretty sure a minor torpedo issue was the subject of the muttering. Facing in the opposite direction, Serino immediately stood up straight and Gunderson with him, but Hachman bade them to hold still.

"Morning, Chief," he said quietly.

"Morning, sir." The response came from both chiefs at once, but then Serino scoffed mildly. "Wish I knew what's apt to be good about a morning like this."

"How are they holding up?" Hachman asked, nodding at the crewmen further forward. Some were still prostrate in their bunks, others sitting up with playing cards, coffee cups or obscene pictures.

"Tense as a hull plate, the lot of 'em. Not everybody feels like a million bucks. All that's left of the Navy is out here right now and it's all running on Admiral Nimitz's gut."

"Well, I'm heading up to take morning stars in a minute." Hachman's tone was muted but sharp and Serino knew he wasn't joking. "Then I'm going to the after room, and then you and I are going to work in opposite directions toward the crew's quarters. And we're gonna make this plain as day, Chief: If we lose Midway, not only does the Jap have a clear alley to Pearl and the West Coast, but we here in these submarines _are_ gonna be all that's left of the Navy. Every man Jack on this boat is gonna do his bit to keep it from coming to that."

"Damn sure will, sir," the Chief of the Boat said, deadpan.

"All right. Give me fifteen minutes and then start working aft."

"Aye, aye, sir." Serino stood at attention until Hachman had sidled into the officers' head, and then he relaxed and resumed his leaning position on the reload torpedo.

"What does he want you to say?" Gunderson mumbled. "All he's gotta do is stand on some Jap flight deck and tell 'em to fuck off, and the war'll be over right then and there."

"Yeah, if you can get the Old Man to pop him up alongside," Serino mumbled back. Wry banter aside, he couldn't argue with Gunderson's appraisal of the _Hammerjaw_ 's executive officer.

William Malcolm Hachman knew how to make himself heard - by enlisted men, officers and civilians regardless. It had only in the least to do with his physique, that of a champion heavyweight boxer, a title that had earned him his Academy nickname "Hammer." He had an aura of authority about him that Serino had only ever seen in other Chief Petty Officers, and then only those he himself had respected unquestioningly when he was a junior boatswain. Having attained the rank of lieutenant commander after only nine and a half years, eight of which he'd spent in submarines, Hachman very rarely raised his voice - but what it reserved in volume, it made up for in intensity. When Bill Hachman started speaking, everybody within earshot seemed to stop what they were doing automatically and hang on his every word. Serino could more than stand for him to be appointed captain of the _Hammerjaw_ , but having graduated from the Naval Academy in 1932, he was deemed too young by the Bureau of Personnel.

Meanwhile, Hachman, finishing his business in the small washroom, ran an inch of water into his cupped hands and splashed it over his face, then gazed at it in the washbasin mirror. The dark circles were evident, his eyes wearied, suggesting a somewhat greater age than thirty-one. _Better cool your damn heels, Bill,_ the thought escaped into his mind's ear. The stress was showing - the _Hammerjaw_ had been launched only a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the tension had been almost non-stop as the crew thirsted for action during training and the preparations for the Japanese movement against Midway. He exited the head and heaved himself back through the watertight doorway into Officers' Country, whose corridor had absolutely no wiggle room for the breadth of his shoulders.

Briefly he stuck his nose into his stateroom to procure his sextant and star chart - Brill was still out cold. Then aft he proceeded past the Chief Petty Officers' quarters and hauled himself through the equally small watertight door into the control room. All was in order: helm and diving controls manned, Chief Quartermaster Benny O'Donnell overseeing the dive, the audible scratch of the radioman's pen scribbling intercepted messages in the radio shack at the aft end of the room. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing but the choking thick air of restless strain hanging throughout the _Hammerjaw_ from one torpedo room to the other, borne of the knowledge that they could be diving into the biggest battle of the war to date.

Hachman could feel his mandibles crick as he climbed the ladder into the conning tower, yet another sign of stressful months. By now he was used to stooping as he exited the hatch to avoid braining himself on the low curve of the overhead. If you thought of a submarine as a large-caliber bolt-action rifle, the conning tower could easily be compared with the telescopic sight mounted on top - the better as it afforded the submarine its only periscopic view of the surface when it was submerged. The tower was encased and protected from outside pressure by a wraparound steel fairing that also housed the bridge and periscope shears.

Without a word to distract the two sailors on watch at the sonar and radar gear, Hachman nodded briefly to Hedrick Elwood, the lanky ensign who had just reached the bottom of the ladder from the bridge. Elwood was known to the _Hammerjaw_ as the "George," a submarine's most junior officer, responsible for the oversight of supply and commissary: minutes earlier he had been relieved from his midnight to 0400 watch as Officer of the Deck. He greeted the exec politely and descended to the control room as Hachman leaned against the bridge ladder and gazed up toward the open hatch.

"Exec on the bridge?" he called.

"Aye, sir, exec on the bridge." He listened to the soft footscrape of Norman Zalecki, the assistant engineering officer and current Officer of the Deck, moving slightly back from the hatch to make room on the small bridge for Hachman to climb up. Astern of the _Hammerjaw_ , the thin grey band of daybreak could be seen below a cloud bank, and against it, the erect silhouette of the submarine's commanding officer standing on the cigarette deck abaft the bridge. The sea and the sky ahead were still dark, much darker on the horizon due to an eastbound rain squall that just might be screening the Japanese fleet's approach – if they were even still on their predicted course.

"'Morning, Mr. Hachman." Lawrence Gale, the quartermaster of the watch manning the bridge with Zalecki, nodded in greeting, taking the proffered star chart.

"'Morning, Larry. Much sleep for you?"

"No, sir," Gale said with a wry chuckle. "Same for most of us, I'm thinkin'."

"Part of me's glad we're up and at 'em. Who knows, could be just little old us sailing into the middle of the Jap Navy here. But only if we're in position." Hachman glanced obliquely at Zalecki as he aimed the sextant into the northern sky. "Sure you haven't forgotten anything, Norm?"

"Sir?" Zalecki frowned slightly.

"Morning star sights are a lot less tricky if I know which way we're heading."

"Oh, yes, sir," Zalecki said with a hasty chuckle. "Sorry, sir. We're heading two eight zero degrees true at ten knots. Battery charge is full and secured. Main engines three and four on the line. No course changes ordered this watch."

"Thank you, Norm. Always good to know where we are in the world."

"Yes, sir. Sorry about that slip-up. I....guess I'm a little edgy."

"Don't think there's a man in the Navy who can't say the same right now." Hachman spoke almost absently as he fixed on the North Star. "Any news?"

"Just a few position reports. The _Nautilus_ is about eighteen miles to the south of us, _Grouper_ fifteen to the north. If the Japs are about, no way they'll squeak past without one of us spotting them."

"They're about. They hit the Aleutians yesterday already, which means they're committed." Carefully Hachman sighted on two more stars and turned to Gale, who was holding the star chart open on the instrument panel in front of him.

"Wonder if our carriers are on the spot yet," Gale said in a muted tone.

"If they are, we're not going to hear about it. We'll be going silent ourselves before we dive." It was while Hachman was closing in the _Hammerjaw_ 's position that he sensed a new arrival, coming forward from the cigarette deck. All but the lookouts stiffened to attention as Commander Douglas Stewart, hands clasped round his binoculars, sidled around the periscope shears and moved into the space made for him at the gyrocompass. His pale blue eyes glared distrustfully from his gaunt, seasoned face, his close-cropped spiky blond hair barely wavered in the sea breeze sweeping the deck.

"Good morning, Captain," Hachman nodded.

"Gentlemen," Stewart replied briefly. "Well, Mr. Hachman, would you have made the Vikings proud?"

"I should hope so, sir. We're spot on position a hundred and seventy-five miles from Midway. Now all we need is a Jap seaport to wreak havoc on." Hachman smiled as a ripple of laughter darted across the bridge.

Stewart, however, had only a small, frosty smile to add to the mirth. "Well, the Marines can worry about that part, if and when the time comes. I'm going below to attend some administrative business. Kindly notify me if anything less mundane than running over a dolphin occurs."

"Aye, aye, sir." Hachman moved to one side to clear Stewart's path to the hatch.

Gale eyed the opening and waited until Stewart's greying blond head had vanished from view before he gave a nearly inaudible scoff. "Don't he just fancy hisself a barrel of laughs. Run over a dolphin? What does he think we are, a tramp steamer?"

"You'd think we're a battleship for the way he rode herd on us - " Zalecki started, but Hachman silenced him with a glare.

"All right, that's enough," he said sharply. "Worry about what's out there ahead of us, not what's down below us. The Old Man's right about one thing, we could run into plenty worse and we probably will before the day's done."

In two minutes' time, Hachman was in the control room, bent over the chart on the gyrocompass table and penciling the _Hammerjaw_ 's newly plotted position onto the chart. 175 miles from Midway, an insignificant distance to look at the line he'd just drawn. But as the crow flies, the Hudson Valley is only a little further inland from the tidewaters of Massachusetts Bay - a tidbit of geographical trivia Hachman had picked up from his railroading younger brother over recent years. Even at flank speed it would take over six hours for the boat to traverse that little scratch mark and come within sight of land.

As an afterthought, he added the information from the latest position reports to the fanlike arc of submarines stationed west of the tiny island bastion. If the codebreakers in Pearl Harbor were correct, if they had not missed a detail, if they had not been misled by falsified Japanese transmissions - the enemy strike force could be 300 miles dead ahead or less. Their exact course was the one unknown. Most likely one of four submarines - _Grouper, Hammerjaw, Nautilus,_ or _Grenadier_ \- would make contact, attack if possible, and summon the other nearby boats to the assault like a swarm of killer bees. Privately, Hachman hoped it would not be the gigantic, ancient, unwieldy _Nautilus_. From what he'd seen of it in drydock at Mare Island during its last overhaul, it more closely resembled a humpback whale than a submarine. He didn't think much of its chances for survival if it made any contact with the enemy.

With an apprehensive sigh, Hachman shook himself: he had his own boat and people to worry about. Chief Serino, if he ran true to his form of obeying lawful orders and then sternly relaying them to the crew, would be starting aft in five minutes. Hachman pocketed his pencil and made a beeline for the aft torpedo room.

Were the truth to be known, it was impossible _not_ to make a beeline anywhere on the _Hammerjaw_. 311 feet long and only 27 feet athwartships, its accommodations for its crew were uncomfortably close at best. From the six torpedo tubes in the bow to the four tubes in the stern, you could walk in almost a ramrod-straight line from the forward torpedo room through the officers' quarters, the control room, the crew's mess, the crew's berthing compartment, the forward and aft engine rooms, the maneuvering room and the aft torpedo room, and only step away from that straight line twice. It was not for naught that the submarine, like all others, was manned entirely by volunteers who had made it through rigorous physical and psychological examinations to ascertain their fitness for the duty.

To handfuls of these men in each compartment, Hachman paused and spoke quietly, gauging their readiness, measuring their tension. Despite changing his wording at each murmuring pep talk, he maintained the same idea: Stay on your toes. You have a job to do, the biggest job you've ever done. Don't mess up and we'll all get to to home alive, maybe even score a knockout blow before we do it, and make all those bumped heads, bashed elbows, and subluxed joints we suffered during training pay off.

The forward engine room was quiet but warm: the heat from its immense pair of new Winton diesels had yet to ebb since they were secured. Hachman nodded in response to the greeting from Ed Marcotte, the chief machinist's mate who oversaw both engine rooms, but didn't answer him straight away - his mind was elsewhere, on the multiple engine breakdowns the _Hammerjaw_ had weathered during its sea trials. The Hooven-Owens-Rentschler engines with which it had been built caused nothing but trouble, wasting so much time with their incessant defects that they'd had to be replaced entirely, and the _Hammerjaw_ had ended up reaching the war zone all of two months behind schedule. He stared at the main induction piping overhead, vividly remembering the catastrophic piston failure that had damaged the piping, spewed diesel fuel clear across the compartment, and would have surely killed a man unfortunate enough to be standing in front of that piston when it blew.

Marcotte saw the pensive expression on Hachman's visage and followed his gaze to the main induction piping, where he found it easy to guess at what was on the exec's mind. "Thank God that happened during trials, huh?" he remarked. "Wouldn't need one of those fuckers to blow when we're tryin' to outrun a Jap ship on the surface."

"How about these ones, then?" Hachman asked, nodding at the Wintons.

"Oh, these are beauties," Marcotte grinned. "Nice 'n' smooth, easy on the fingers. But shit, would I love to get my fingers on the peckerhead who tried to stick us with those Man Whores. Oughta rip those junk buckets out of every boat that ever ran 'em."

"Well, don't ask for a transfer to the Bureau of Engineering just yet. We still have a clash of the titans to get through. As long as these are running better than the H.O.R.s, maybe we actually will."

He continued his aft march, patting a shoulder here, an upper arm there, muttering quiet words of encouragement to men he passed. Marcotte waited until he had passed into the still-rumbling, vibrating aft engine room and then picked up the sound-powered telephone on the starboard bulkhead.

"You guys better get heaving," he advised the watch in the maneuvering room. "The exec's on his way aft and he's got words."

The words Hachman had for the men on watch in the aft engine room were few and brief: with the two great 12-cylinder diesels hammering out a ten-knot speed, it was a chore to make oneself heard. He settled for inquiring with them about the engines' condition and their own alike. Satisfied that all was well in spite of the apprehension permeating the boat, he proceeded to the maneuvering room and the aft torpedo room.

On his way back forward, he could already hear Serino's heavy voice dominating the crew compartment before he reached the watertight door separating it from the forward engine room.

"Look, you wanna start giving the Old Man his orders on how to sail this boat, you can go wake him up and give 'em to him yourself. And make a nice picnic of it, he ain't sweet and cuddly like me. So cuddle your ass up forward and quit your bellyachin'!"

Smiling faintly, Hachman ducked and squeezed - a motion to which he was now well accustomed - through the watertight doorway. He entered the crew compartment to find most of the off-duty crewmen propping themselves up on their bunks, with a dour Serino glowering at them as he took a swig from an already half-empty coffee cup.

"You're an inspiration to us all, Chief," Hachman said dryly, loud enough to be heard by everyone else in the space.

"Sorry to hear that, sir," Serino said, perfectly straight-faced. "I prefer the term 'son of a bitch'."

"Boys up forward still hanging in there?"

"They damn sure are now, sir." The hardness in Serino's tone told Hachman that he had exercised all due and proper Chief-ness upon the men from the crew compartment on forward.

"Good. Might be best we get ourselves - "

Hachman's suggestion was never heard, suddenly and unceremoniously cut short by the squawking klaxon roar of the diving alarm. Two blasts burst from the speakers, a split second ahead of Zalecki's voice, high and excited:

_"Dive! Dive!"_

Cursing under his breath, Hachman abandoned his executive statement and bolted from the compartment on Serino's heels. Both men dashed forward for the control room, fighting to keep balance against the _Hammerjaw_ 's sharp downward incline: the vibration of the hull abated as the diesel engines shut down and the maneuvering watch switched the motors over to battery power. The thud of feet on decks echoed from forward and aft, the excited utterances were unintelligible but loud.

Stewart hauled himself through the forward hatch into the control room to hear the lookouts thumping to the deck above in the conning tower, then the loud clank of the bridge hatch closing and Gale dogging it tightly shut. With a quick glance at the Christmas tree - the panel of red and green indicator lights showing the status of hull openings - Stewart sidled over to the ladder as Hachman and Serino arrived across from him.

"Report, Mr. Zalecki," Stewart called up the hatch.

"Aircraft abeam to starboard, sir," Zalecki responded. "Lookouts spotted him coming out of the clouds, about six miles out."

"Green board!" Chief O'Donnell broke in. "Pressure in the boat. Passing thirty feet, full speed, Captain."

"Mr. Hachman, take the dive," Stewart ordered. "Take her down to one hundred and fifty feet. Rig for depth charge. Helm, all ahead two-thirds."

"One hundred and fifty feet, aye. Twenty-degree dive, both planes." Hachman moved in behind the diving-plane operators, glaring at the depth gauges above their control wheels: the needles were sweeping past 65 feet. The _Hammerjaw_ would now be effectively blind until it ascended back to periscope depth – but barring a sonar malfunction, it was still far from deaf.

Stewart climbed into the conning tower to find Radioman Second Class Shane Brunell hunched intently over the sonar gear. Further aft, Zalecki stood near the torpedo data computer, his expression disquieted at best. He was not looking forward to being reamed out by Stewart if it turned out that he had committed an error in judgment, needlessly interrupting the captain's early-morning siesta. The lookouts, along with Gale, were grouped below the bridge hatch, collectively holding their breath.

"Who spotted the plane?" Stewart asked.

"Me, sir." The man standing behind Gale half-raised his hand.

"I.D.?"

"It was a big one, sir. Recon of some kind. High-wing. It was parallelling our course."

"Could have been one of our PBYs, sir," Zalecki suggested.

"Passing one hundred feet," Hachman called up the hatch. "All compartments report rigged for depth charge, Captain."

"Very well," Stewart answered. Turning on the lookout, he continued: "You're sure it was parallelling our course, not opposing?"

"Not a hundred percent, sir," the lookout shook his head. "It came out from behind a cloud and then disappeared again."

Quietly, Stewart nodded. "Very well, then. You men go below. We'll be staying down for the time being."

"Aye, aye, sir," Gale said. With an oblique glance at the lookouts, he led the way to the hatch and down the ladder into the control room.

Out of rote, Hachman moved away from the ladder to clear their path and leaned against the chart table. The _Hammerjaw_ was now at 135 feet and still descending fast: the air pressure O'Donnell had bled into the boat checked out. All exterior openings were secure, rendering the hull completely watertight.

"Blow negative to the mark," Hachman said to O'Donnell, who now stood in front of the ballast pump manifold. "Zero your bubble. Close main vents."

"Zero bubble, close main vents, aye." With a series of quick movements over the row of levers in front of him, O'Donnell had the main ballast tank vents closed as the planesmen reduced their dive angle to zero. At the same time he pumped out the negative tank – a relatively small tank in the keel below the control room, allowing a faster dive when flooded - just enough to bring the _Hammerjaw_ back onto an even keel without sending it rocketing back to the surface. The air bubble in the inclinometer eased toward its apex, the needles on the depth gauges slowed to a creep and then came to rest on the 150 mark as the _Hammerjaw_ canted upward onto an even keel. At 150 feet, it would be just about invisible from the air, but only halfway to its rated test depth.

"Levelled off at a hundred and fifty feet, Captain," Hachman called up the hatch.

"Very well," Stewart said. He paced to the bridge ladder and leaned against it, staring at the sonar gear. "Sound?" he muttered.

"All clear, sir." Brunell spoke in a low murmur, his mind focused more on his ears than his tongue. Since the _Hammerjaw_ submerged, he had already made three full sweeps with the twin hydrophones and not picked up so much as a school of fish.

"Keep an ear out," Stewart said. "Mr. Zalecki, you have the deck." He moved back to the hatch, dropping to the control room. "Helm, steady as you go. All ahead one-third."

"All ahead one-third, steady as we go, aye," the helmsman acknowledged, at the same time reaching to twist the speed telegraph back a notch.

"Want to go up for a look-see, sir?" Hachman asked.

"No, it's just as well we stay where we are," Stewart said calmly. "That could just as easily have been a Jap recon plane looking for our carriers. Set the submerged watch. If radio picks up even a fragment on the Jap fleet, report it immediately."

"Aye, aye, sir," Hachman muttered. He could guess that some of the enlisted men in the control room caught his guarded glare at Stewart's withdrawing back, but right at that moment of decisive inaction, he didn't care.

* * *

The excitement of the emergency dive had even been enough to awaken Arnie Brill from his miles-deep slumber, but he took advantage of the jolt to raid the otherwise unoccupied wardroom. Hachman was almost surprised to find him fully awake, hunched over a cup of coffee and a plate of toast and bacon. He paused in the doorway, patted his forehead with his sleeve and then rolled both sleeves up, his pores fighting the heat from the silenced diesels as it radiated throughout the boat. The engine heat conspired with the subtropical Central Pacific water, its warmth seeping through the hull, raising the temperature within the _Hammerjaw_ to a less than comfortable 90 degrees a half hour after diving. Hachman sat outboard of the table and scowled through the forward door of the wardroom at the drawn curtain over the entrance to Stewart's stateroom. To maintain morale and discipline on the _Hammerjaw_ , he couldn't afford to disagree with Stewart in front of the officers or the crew, but –

"What the hell's wrong with just going up for a look around?" Brill asked, waving his half-emptied coffee cup over the table.

"Guess I can see his point," Hachman said matter-of-factly. "Chances are it _was_ just a PBY. But even if it was, if he saw our periscope, he might have us figured for a Jap sub, and then where would we be?"

"Still, he's got to be a good hundred miles away by now." Buford Sandow, a short, somewhat portly young officer who oversaw the _Hammerjaw_ 's engineering plant, spoke with a confused toss of his hands. "We're just wasting battery juice staying down here."

"Be that as it may, Bud, we could have an awful lot of company up there in a couple of hours." Taking a pull from his own coffee cup, Hachman paused, leaning on the table, staring blankly at the cloth. There was a faraway look in his eyes that neither Brill nor Sandow missed: he wasn't given to such vacancy. Neither of them could know that he was thinking ahead, far ahead, to wheresoever the Imperial Japanese Fleet was digging its heels in, trying to guess their first move all on his own.

As he idly took another swallow of coffee, his reverie was distended yet again – this time by O'Donnell's muted but urgent call from the control room. "Skipper! Skipper, Mr. Hachman, radio flash!"

"Here we go," Hachman said tensely as he launched himself from the wardroom table to the corridor.

Stewart broke out of his stateroom just ahead of Hachman, leading the way at a determined stride into the control room. Both men squeezed their way between sailors, bulkheads and equipment aft to the radio shack, where the radio operator had laid out two flimsies already, transcribed from intercepted radio traffic.

"What do we have?" Stewart demanded.

"Search planes have visual on the Jap fleet, sir!" the radio operator said excitedly, thrusting the two flimsies at him.

Alert, Stewart grabbed both flimsies and handed one to Hachman, quickly skimming the other. "My God," he uttered. "That's a fleet, all right. Two carriers and a battleship. That means the striking force is right where we expected them!"

"And they've sent out their first strike already," Hachman said, hefting the flimsy in his hand. "This one says there's a flock of Jap planes heading for Midway!"

"With me." Stewart edged between Hachman and the radio-shack bulkhead and marched purposefully forward to the gyrocompass table. On his heels, Hachman spared a quick enough glance at his wrist watch – 0555. At their present latitude it would be broad daylight up above: if Stewart was still in his hide-and-don't-be-sought frame of mind, he wouldn't risk taking the _Hammerjaw_ any shallower and being spotted by enemy aircraft.

"This says two Jap flattops and a battleship bearing three two zero, distance a hundred and eighty miles, course one three five, speed twenty-five knots," Stewart said, reading from the flimsy. "But were they a hundred and eighty miles from Midway, or some other point they failed to specify?"

"Well, sir, without anything definite, I'm inclined to go with Midway," Hachman said as he procured pencil and slide rule from the chart cabinet.

"Seems to be all we have," Stewart concurred. Hachman was no more than seconds updating the _Hammerjaw_ 's position and then shifting his attention to the Japanese fleet. Peering at Stewart's flimsy, he quickly measured bearing and distance, drawing a three-inch straight line on the chart to the northwest of the reported position. Then he penciled in two dotted lines, one along the Japanese fleet's present course, then one along the _Hammerjaw_ 's, dashing both lines until they intersected.

"If we come left to two two zero and increase speed to two-thirds, sir, we could intercept the Jap fleet right about here in about four hours," he said. The tip of the pencil rested on a point along the Japanese fleet's course, off the _Hammerjaw_ 's port bow.

"Assuming, of course, they maintain their present course and speed," Stewart countered. "Mr. Hachman, assumptions will get us nowhere. If we change course as you suggest, we'll be straying into the _Nautilus_ 's sector before long. I don't want him reporting an enemy submarine contact and bringing our own forces down on us. We'll keep to our sector unless we're ordered otherwise."

"You may be right about the Japs, sir. But that means we've got no idea which way they'll turn or how quickly. I'd respectfully suggest, sir, we take a west-southwesterly course. That would keep us out of the _Nautilus_ 's hair and give us a better chance of intercepting them before they get any closer to Midway."

Stewart sighed, ogling the plot. At the Naval Academy, he'd had it drilled into his head that a ship's captain had total authority, in fact the power of life and death, over that ship's crew. At submarine school, he'd had it drilled harder yet that there was no ship whose survival depended more on teamwork than a submarine. It seemed to him like something of a dichotomy, that every man aboard had to depend on every other man aboard just to get through the watch, and yet only one man aboard bore total responsibility for the other eighty. An unrealized fear gripped the base of his spine that the crew would lose confidence in him, that this fighting unit he'd trained and drilled with such boot-camp intensity could suddenly fall apart around his ears if he allowed Hachman's suggestions to dictate his every move.

Still, in his heart of hearts, he had to admit, however grudgingly, that Hachman was right and they should assume an intercept course to keep the Japanese at bay. They had far too many objectives right now to worry about letting a power struggle rip the crew's cohesion to shreds. They could settle this some other time.

"Very well, Mr. Hachman," he muttered, straightening up. "Helm, come left to course two five zero. All ahead two-thirds."

"Course two five zero, all ahead two-thirds, aye." The helmsman bent slightly leftward over the wheel as he spun it, hoping Stewart wouldn't see his satisfied smile reflected in a gauge glass.

Stewart, meanwhile, sidled around the chart table, squeezing past Chief O'Donnell to the 1MC speaker beside the helm. "All hands, this is the captain," he announced. "Search aircraft have discovered the Japanese fleet one hundred and eighty miles northwest of Midway. We will proceed on an intercept course, report contact with the enemy fleet, and if the opportunity presents itself, we will attack. Stand easy, but be ready to go to battle stations in case they turn on us. That is all."

With that, Stewart clicked off the 1MC circuit to a flurry of unintelligible muttering from forward and aft. Eyeing Hachman coolly for a long moment, he concluded: "All right, gentlemen, let's get about it. Mr. Hachman, kindly tell Mr. Elwood to see to it that the galley has plenty of coffee and pastries on hand. If we do have a face-off with the Jap, that may be all the sustenance we get for some time."

"Yes, sir," Hachman acknowledged. A curt nod and Stewart was on his way up the ladder into the conning tower, missing a guarded series of scoffs and chortles from the men in the control room.

"Okay, fellas, you heard the man," Hachman said. "Two carriers, a battleship and a hell's-bowl full of escorts. You know what that means, don't you?"

"Depth charges by the ton?" the stern planesman offered.

"Try again," Hachman said. "Try _Hammerjaw_ being the first boat to get a crack at a Jap flattop! Old Man History's already set us a stage, boys. Now let's make it happen!"


	2. Chapter 2

The _Hammerjaw_ 's 30-degree course change had placed the on-rushing Japanese fleet back off the submarine's starboard bow, albeit still about twenty miles distant: it would take the four-carrier striking force some time to pass ahead of the _Hammerjaw_ 's bull-nosed prow. The aircraft, however, were another matter. They had covered the slightly less than 180 miles to Midway unblemished, even by the island's fighter corps: the nimble Japanese Zero fighters flew right through the ancient American craft with minimal casualties. And for every bomb that fell on Midway, Japanese scout planes were advancing another mile east, seeking out the American carrier force.

Even the submarines closest to the striking force's approach course were in the dark as to what was happening up above. If they were running shallow enough to receive low-frequency transmissions from the submarine force command in Pearl Harbor, they weren't picking up much of substance. Contact reports from scouting aircraft or other submarines could only tell them so much, and even that information passed through filters of questionable quality. Guesswork might give the submariners the impression that a Japanese scout plane had spotted the American surface fleet lying in wait northeast of Midway. Realistic appraisal might advise that the commander of the Japanese striking force had launched an air attack on the U.S. fleet. Cautious optimism might divulge that half a dozen squadrons of American torpedo planes and dive bombers were winging their way west to attack the striking force at the same time. No small amount of wildest dreams could inform that the Japanese force commander couldn't make up his mind whether to launch his next strike against Midway or his newly discovered floating adversary. The men of the _Hammerjaw_ had to face the reality that there wasn't much to be learned by anything less than meeting their enemy in battle.

Bill Hachman could scarcely restrain himself from pacing back and forth through the _Hammerjaw_ waiting for the call to action. Pacing was a poor habit indeed on a submerged submarine, due to the unreal delicacy of the ship's diving trim: a single man walking from the middle of the boat to either end could cause the boat's dive angle to shift. 0700 came and went, and there was no sound contact, no change of orders from Pearl Harbor or Captain Stewart, and only the crew's best guesses as to the Japanese fleet's movement since the initial contact. The dozen or so contact reports from the scout planes gave an uncomprehending jumble of course, speed, and bearing information on the Japanese, making the _Hammerjaw_ 's plot look like the designs of a pretzel baker gone insane. Hachman shook his head, wondering if he would ever see a neat, orderly plot flow from his own fingers again for the rest of the war.

Slow of steps, he stumped aft, squeezed between the periscope wells and Chief O'Donnell at the trim manifold, and leaned against the radio-shack bulkhead. He had planted an extra man on watch in the radio room: now both men had a stack of flimsies at their elbows and were copying still more as the contact reports poured in. The low-frequency radio antenna topside, trailing horizontally behind the periscope shears, would be the envy of an electric eel by this time.

He beckoned for the latest flimsy and studied it, sighing imperceptibly at its content. _Now_ the Japanese were apparently headed due east, possibly a dozen or so miles to the south: it was impossible to tell if they would pass anywhere near the _Hammerjaw_ , let alone within range of its torpedoes. Since the 0545 contact, there was no further word of enemy planes heading for Midway.

He bit back a grumble of frustration and returned to the chart table to add to the mess of contact information scrawled on it already. However, he had barely touched pencil to chart when the loud whisper from Herbert Liscomb, the communications officer hovering at the door to the radio shack, brought him gravitating back to it, almost elbowing O'Donnell in the kidney as he rushed past him.

One look at the new flimsy, however, and he was back below the conning-tower hatch in a turn and a half of the _Hammerjaw_ 's propellers.

"Captain!" he called up the hatch. "New contact from ComSubPac. Enemy carriers headed zero nine zero, bearing now three one zero from Midway at a hundred and sixty-eight miles."

"What's our position?" Stewart inquired.

"One hundred and sixty-two miles, bearing three one one."

"That's our cue," Stewart pronounced. "Sound General Quarters!"

"Yes, _sir!"_ A long-building rush of excitement coursed through Hachman as he rounded the chart table and launched himself at the 1MC. "This is not a drill! This is not a drill! General Quarters! General Quarters! All hands, man your battle stations!"

With that, he toggled the alarm. The ear-ringing clang of the General Quarters alarm was simultaneous with the sudden thud of rushing feet throughout the _Hammerjaw_ , deck plates rattling and men shouting, as they bolted to and from the torpedo rooms and radiated from the crew's quarters to their battle stations. Hachman stood still by the chart desk, eyeing the diving trim on one side of the control room and the rabble of running, sidling and chest-bumping sailors on the other. The tight quarters notwithstanding, nobody stumbled and fell. An elbow struck a door coaming here, a wrist smacked a ladder there, but after months of unrelenting drills, sailors are wont to set all-new records in their manning of battle stations when the action is for real. The rush of excitement eclipsed the buzz of tension that had been pervading the air up till now.

Presently the fulminate pounding of feet abated, the excited shouting ceased, and Bud Sandow, taking his battle station as diving officer, got busy adjusting the _Hammerjaw_ 's trim for the drastic shifting of personnel. Serino was already at his station on the ballast pump manifold, reaching one hand blindly aside to kill the alarm. The _Hammerjaw_ fell suddenly silent, but for the battle-telephone talkers in each compartment reporting readiness to the conn.

The report from the maneuvering room completed, Stewart glanced at his watch: the half-dozen men now crowding the conning tower with him braced themselves for the shake of his head. "Thirty-eight seconds," he stated reproachfully, loud enough to be heard in the control room. "We were three seconds faster during shakedown. This is not an act I care to repeat during battle, gentlemen."

There was a perceptible sense of deflation amongst the numerous crewmen who could have sworn they'd beaten all training records by nearly a minute. The sailor manning the bow planes moved to make an obscene gesture toward the hatch, but a glancing wallop from Serino and he thought better of it.

"Sound?" Stewart said.

"Still clear, Cap'n," Brunell's drawl was still soft as baby's breath.

"Very well. Helm, steady as you go." Stewart stepped close to the bridge ladder, seeking what elbow room he could from the dense crowd of sailors packing the conning tower. "Mr. Hachman, estimated time to intercept?"

"Three hours, present speed, sir," Hachman answered. "We could shave off forty-five minutes, though, if we increase to standard speed."

"To exhausted batteries, you mean," Stewart said pompously. "We'll hold her to two-thirds."

"What the hell, doesn't he even want to get into action?" Sandow whispered. "Why does he think we're even here?"

"Gotta die of something," Elwood muttered. "But boredom isn't my – "

"Knock it off," Hachman growled. "I don't like it any better than you guys, but bitching about it isn't going to do us an ocean of good. Not with an ocean full of Japs bearing down on us."

The minutes stretched and elongated and became a half hour, then an hour, and no tireless squeeze of sea pressure outside the hull could measure up to the still-climbing pressure inside. The forward torpedo room was amongst the tensest compartments, half a dozen of its occupants hovering by the tubes and another half a dozen lingering near the aft bulkhead, waiting for the word to switch the hydrophones over to hand power. Leaning almost casually against the torpedo tubes, Chief Gunderson folded his solid arms and stared hotly aft. The telephone talkers heard all and relayed all, and Stewart's tiptoeing approach to action had neither escaped nor amused him.

"Two five zero at five knots," he muttered. "What the fuck is this, Midway or Key West?"

"We'll find out when we get told to shoot from two hundred feet," another torpedoman grumbled.

"Can we even shoot that deep?" This from a young seaman who had been assigned to the reload crew.

"I'll try anything once," Gunderson said. "And by the sound of things, the Old Man wouldn't have it any other way."

Hachman couldn't admit it - nor would he be caught dead doing it - but he was inwardly fuming at Stewart's commands. Granted, being caught by mock enemy forces during a peacetime exercise was a career-ender, but the key word was 'peacetime': they were nearly a full six months past the time for such scruples now. The enemy was up there to be fought, not avoided at all costs. Hachman had no way of knowing what sort of action the _Hammerjaw_ was missing right now, but for all he knew, the American carriers could be sailing a straight course to Davy Jones's locker and leaving the entire battle in the hands of the submarines.

"Control, a position update, if you please," Stewart's voice, almost unexpected, rang down the hatch.

 _About damn time you spoke up,_ Hachman thought acidly. He traced one finger up the course line to the small point of light radiating from the dead-reckoning tracer above the chart desk, keeping pace with the _Hammerjaw_ 's advance on the enemy. "Holding steady on two five zero, twenty-nine north, one seventy-eight west," he answered.

"Very well." It was not the acknowledgement Hachman wanted to hear, but it surprised him not. He returned to minding the plot, his teeth clenching unconsciously as the dead-reckoning tracer advanced within five miles of the last reported Japanese position. They couldn't be far now, even if they were maneuvering to launch and recover aircraft.

Recover them from _where?_

Hachman's teeth went from clench to grind as the question sank its own choppers into his brain. Had they levelled Midway already, or had they sent one, or two, or all three of the U.S. carriers to the bottom? Or had the fighter squadrons of both island and carriers turned them back? There was no way of telling without sifting through the latest tome of radio intercepts hoping to find something meaningful.

But radio intercepts, they were quick to find out, were far from the only news source available. Though Hachman wouldn't budge from the plot, nor Stewart from the search periscope, nor any other man aboard from his battle station, Brunell was oblivious to the inside of the _Hammerjaw_. His focus was outside, in the dozens of square miles of ocean surrounding the boat. There it was that the tension within, though distracted, found only a magnifier.

"Skipper!" his sudden quiet hiss brought Stewart's bowed head snapping upward. Brunell gesticulated at the sound gear, which, as Stewart could already see from the other side of the periscope, was focused to the port beam.

"Enemy?" he asked, in the midst of two quick steps over to the sound gear.

"Practically," Brunell said. "They're shellackin' somebody out there." He went silent, and Stewart could already discern the distant but unmistakable blasts of depth charges welling from Brunell's earphones.

"Estimate range?" Stewart muttered.

"Not unless we get close enough to pick up some screws, sir. Ain't nothin' but shit-cans comin' down out there. Bearing...." Brunell paused to focus the hydrophones a few degrees at a time. "Two seven three relative."

"If they're anywhere near their projected position...." Stewart thought a moment, a thought that seemed to lurch about his head with sufficient force to shake it from side to side. "Has to be the _Nautilus_ getting the pasting. God help them." Hands on hips, he turned and sidled back over to the search periscope.

"'Least someone's getting some action around here." Gale, manning the helm, murmured this through the corner of his mouth to Miles Quigley, the seaman wearing the battle telephone set in the conning tower.

"Yeah, and here we are, just takin' in the sights," Quigley chortled.

Sandow, leaning on the conning-tower ladder, was closest and priviest to the exchange between Stewart and Brunell. Shaking his head in frustration, he glanced obliquely at Hachman. "Can't be more than twenty miles to the south and all we can do is sit here and listen."

"Sit _tight_ here and listen, Bud," Hachman corrected. "There's still a hellish lot of Japs out there. Our turn's coming, so we better hold." He rechecked his watch. "Almost zero nine hundred now. They've got plenty of day left to come our way."

Despite the prospects of action, there was still no relief in sight as the _Hammerjaw_ crept onward: no relief from the heat, no relief from the tension that had once again taken over from the excitement of General Quarters. The mercury was already crowding 100 degrees. There was especially no relief from the stench of sweaty, grubby bodies. Many arms were folded amongst Gunderson and his torpedo crew in their unending wait for the call to action. Though Officers' Country was mostly unmanned but for the steward securing dishes and utensils, the crowded control room made up for that quiet emptiness with its complement of panting sailors hunching over their manifolds and control wheels. It was a chore for the radiomen to refrain from tapping their pencils on the radio console to expend nervous energy.

By now the fear of implosion had ebbed somewhat as the nervous pressure inside the boat equaled, then surpassed, the squeezing sea pressure outside, seeping through the hull from the crew's mess and berthing compartment. It pitched and amplified amongst the damage-control crews and carried back into the engine rooms, where railings, valves, and anything else small enough to be grasped would bear long-enduring fingerprints indeed. The voltage dominating the maneuvering room was almost as strong as the energy pouring through the nervous systems of the electricians. And in the aft torpedo room - none of whose crewmen could even count on being called to action - any loosening of the inner-door sealing rings and the mounting tension might well force a torpedo out through its still-secured outer door.

Thus it was that when Brunell spoke again, almost an hour and a half later, he might as well have slapped every man on the boat with a titanic spark of static electricity.

 _"More_ explosions," he announced in his accustomed soft murmur. "Way out off the port bow. Not depth charges, though. These are a damn sight more intense."

"Might we trouble you for an exact bearing?" Stewart said with a twinge of sarcasm.

"It's a wide field, sir." Brunell had the hydrophones focused in a wide sweep to the west. "Bearings are about three three zero to two nine zero." Suddenly he stiffened and pressed his headphones hard against his head. "Oh, wait a minute. Wait - wait a minute! Hot _damn!_ Something just blew up like an ammo dump out there!"

To hear this coming with such astonishment from the usually soft-spoken, detached Brunell, it felt as if every molecule of air within the _Hammerjaw_ had been sucked up in one great collective gasp. Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than in the torpedo rooms, where it was all the torpedomen could do to resist grabbing wrenches and opening outer tube doors without waiting for orders. Intently focused as he was on the explosive cacophony far out ahead, Brunell was completely unaware that every eye in the conning tower save for Gale's had turned to drill into him.

"What, did someone get torpedoed?" Stewart asked.

"No, sir, those were up on the surface. Bombs, I'd say. And they're still - " Brunell stiffened again and his widened eyes shot toward the overhead. "Goddamn, there's another one!"

"Get Lieutenant Liscomb up here," Stewart said to Quigley. "All right, Brunell, what do you estimate the range to the closest set of screws?"

Loath as he was to break sonar contact with what could only be exploding enemy ships, Brunell quickly noted the bearing and then pulled at the knob in his right hand, sweeping the hydrophones around in a rapid circular scan. It was then that Liscomb arrived in the conning tower with nothing so much as a report as ordered before Stewart rapped on the sonar module.

"Double up with Brunell on the sound," he ordered. "Something explosive is happening up above and I don't want to get caught in any artificial typhoon here."

"Yes, sir." Liscomb edged in next to Brunell, who had just completed his sweep and focused the hydrophones toward the starboard bow.

"Closest set of screws I can make out bears zero zero eight," he said. "Either a light cruiser or a tin can. Gotta be at least four thousand yards off."

"Mr. Liscomb, do you concur?" Stewart enquired.

Brunell bridled at being second-guessed so quickly, wondering for a moment if that was the only reason Stewart had even summoned his superior officer. Liscomb, however, having barely affixed his own set of headphones, grimaced as he made haste to analyze the sounds he was picking up.

"Yes, sir," he said presently. "Sounds like it's moving away to starboard." He pressed one hand against his right earphone. "Hold on....Shane, you hear that?"

"Yes I does," Brunell said. "That's a heavy, dead ahead, about six thousand yards!"

"Heavy as in cruiser?" Stewart pressed.

"No, sir, heavier than that," Brunell said, looking over his shoulder with an exuberant half-grin. "Multiple screws, big ones. I think we got us a flattop out there, maybe a battleship!"

"Wait, Shane, listen!" Liscomb elbowed him, right headphone still pressed hard. _"Damn,_ that was a hell of a bang!"

"You missed the first two, sir," Brunell's grin had spread from half to full. "Flyboys must really be dishin' it out!"

Stewart had heard enough. He unthinkingly shouldered between Liscomb and the search periscope and leaned over the hatch. "Control, bring us up to periscope depth, smartly!" he snapped. "Mr. Hachman, turn the chart over to Mr. Elwood and lay to the conning tower. We may be in for a set-up here momentarily."

"Be right up," Hachman replied. He winked at Sandow and Elwood and swung around the ladder to pull himself up with somewhat greater rapidity than usual.

"Twenty-degree rise, both planes! Bring her up to sixty-five feet!" Sandow crisply instructed the planesmen. To the trim manifold behind him he continued: "Pump auxiliary to sea!" Then dropping his voice to a whisper, he leant over to Elwood. "About damn time!"

"All right, Mr. Liscomb, how about that heavy screw contact?" Stewart said.

"Drawing to our left," Liscomb said. "I think he's picking up speed. Bearing now three five eight relative."

"Mr. Zalecki, you are of course keeping track of all this," Stewart said pointedly.

"Yes, sir," Zalecki responded from the torpedo data computer with a nearly imperceptible hesitation in his voice. Standing in front of the TDC at the aft end of the conning tower, he reflexively lifted his hands to rest on its knobs, ready to crank in whatever information the sonar operators could provide him.

"Set all torpedoes to run at high speed, depth forty feet," Stewart told him.

"Forty feet, high speed, aye, sir."

"You did say we might have a carrier on our hands?" Hachman probed.

"We'll know in a minute," Stewart answered, a matter of seconds before Sandow's voice reverberated up the hatch.

"Sixty-five feet and holding, sir!"

"Up scope!" Stewart said sharply. Hachman took one quick sideways step to reach for the periscope control lever - he had to make sure his hand found its mark, once he saw Stewart moving for the search periscope instead of the attack one. The austere captain unfolded the scope's handles once they were within reach as the scope hummed its way upward.

His swallow was audible as he twisted the magnification shaft on the left handle.

"Bearing.... _mark!"_ he snapped.

"Bearing, three five six," Hachman answered from the other side of the scope, his gaze locked on the azimuth ring. Meanwhile, Stewart quickly fiddled with the stadimeter knob on the side of the periscope.

"Range.... _mark!_ Fifty-five hundred yards!" Stewart maintained his posture, smiling for the first time anyone could remember since he'd taken command. "A well done to your ears, Brunell. Carrier it is!"

The excitement shot like a flare of burning oil from one end of the boat to the other, palpable in the loud whispers and clapped hands that are involuntary when a man is excited, trained submariner or not. Stewart moved away from the scope and motioned to Hachman, who tried to control his movements to maintain some degree of decorum as he stepped to the eyepieces.

"What do you make of that beast?" Stewart inquired.

"Hell, he looks a little too undamaged to me," Hachman grinned. Indeed, before him floated a marvel of a sight - a great Japanese fleet carrier of at least 20,000 tons, flanked by destroyers and covered by fighter planes. If headed just a few degrees further east, it would be coming straight at the _Hammerjaw_ bow on.

On a whim of curiosity and anticipation, Hachman turned the scope several degrees to port and tensed. The few in the conning tower able to glimpse his profile could see his teeth baring in an elated grin. "Good God, fire and smoke all over the field of vision here!" he exclaimed. "The Japs must be taking one hell of a pasting from our boys!"

"That accounts for the explosions," Stewart said, tapping Hachman on the shoulder. Back at the periscope eyepieces, he took only a second's look at the towering columns of flaming black smoke on the horizon before he turned the scope back on the carrier. "Let's see if we can't take care of this last one for them before those destroyers get in the way. Down scope! Control, take her down to one hundred feet!"

"One hundred feet, aye!" Sandow responded. To Serino and the planesmen, he went on: "Flood forward trim! Ten degrees dive, both planes!"

Such a rapid downward lurch would have caused many a queasy reaction in an untrained stomach, but the crew had had enough of them during shakedown that nobody seemed to give it a thought. The _Hammerjaw_ dropped quickly away from the surface, the sea swells enfolding its periscope wake and washing it flat instantly.

"Keep an ear on those destroyers, Brunell," Stewart said. "Mr. Liscomb, we're going to make a standard sonar approach on the carrier. He picks up speed or changes course, don't you dare miss it. We have to be sure to fire a spread that'll nail him."

"If I'm not mistaken, Jap carriers average about eight hundred feet overall," Hachman said.

"A _Soryu_ -class carrier would be closer to what, seven hundred and fifty?"

"Just about. A spread angle of three or four degrees should score us some good hits if we can work in close enough."

"Well, that'll be the tricky part, won't it? Also, I believe you'll find that the _Hiryu_ is the only Jap carrier that has its island on the port side." Stewart gave Hachman a reproachful sidelong glance and then turned to face aft. "Mr. Zalecki, what's our projected range?"

"Estimated at fifty-two hundred yards now, sir, but we still don't have a speed of advance," Zalecki replied.

"From what I could see, he had to be making a good fifteen knots," Hachman offered. "But chances are he'll be maneuvering to avoid our flyboys."

"Well, then, what do you suggest _now?"_ Stewart asked, rather impatiently, Hachman thought.

"That we come back up to periscope depth and get him back in our sights, if only for a few seconds."

"Ease your bubble at ninety," Sandow's voice floated up the hatch from the control room. "Both planes at zero, hold her at one hundred."

"A few seconds is all we'll need," Hachman went on. "He'll have to turn into the wind sooner or later, either to launch or recover his own fliers."

As the _Hammerjaw_ tilted back upward onto an even keel, Stewart sighed and stared intently at the bulkhead. Then he stepped to one side to hover at Liscomb's shoulder. "Still got a fix on him?"

"Yes, sir. Bearing now three five five, estimated range five thousand yards."

"Tin cans are keeping pace with him, except for one moving off to our starboard bow," Brunell added.

"All ahead one-third," Stewart called forward to Gale. "Left full rudder, steady on course...." He glared for a moment at the sonar dial. "Two three zero. Rig for silent running." As Gale repeated his orders, Stewart moved back to stand between the periscopes, gripping a hoist rod in each hand. "We get caught by those destroyers now and it's all over," he murmured to Hachman. "With their carriers under attack, they'll be out for whatever American blood they can spill - including ours."

Hachman gave Stewart a side eye - under the tensions of a major sea battle, this was probably not the best sentiment to express to fighting men. He decided against pressing it, however. They had more important things to worry about, like getting a solid enough fix to take a shot at that carrier. The planes had somehow missed it - maybe Providence had steered it right into the _Hammerjaw_ 's line of fire.

Maybe Providence would also keep the boat from dropping too deep to fire its torpedoes in the first place. At 100 feet the impulse air should easily be able to counter the outside sea pressure and force the torpedoes out of their tubes, but it wasn't for nothing that 450 was the bottom figure on the depth gauge. God forbid the _Hammerjaw_ should descend deep enough to meet its namesake, a small fish with a huge bite that made its home down to 13,000 feet - more than twenty times the depth that the submarine's hull could withstand.

"What's his bearing now?" Stewart asked.

"Three five three, sir," Liscomb replied. "Judging from his turn count, I make out his speed at about sixteen knots."

"Make ready tubes one through four," Stewart said to Quigley. To Hachman, he went on: "We'll start with a spread of two. If those magnetic exploders work as advertised, we should nail him clean. If we miss, we'll have - "

"Sir, the destroyer's turning toward!" Brunell snapped abruptly. "He's coming right at us, must be turning up twenty knots already!"

"God _damn!"_ Stewart snapped. "What's the range to the flattop?"

"Estimated forty-five hundred yards, but he's turning to our starboard hand and picking up speed!" Liscomb answered. "He must know we're here, that destroyer's coming right across his course!"

"We're over our heads," Stewart grated. "Control, take her down to two hundred feet! Helm, all ahead full, and stand by for a hard turn to starboard when he starts his run!"

"Sir, do you still want to take a shot at the carrier?" Hachman's question had intensity enough to be taken as a demand.

"Rig for depth charge!" Stewart exhorted Quigley. He shot Hachman a split-second glance and a shake of his head before turning back for the sonar gear. "We're going to lose the shot now. We'll be too deep in half a minute."

It was all Hachman could do not to pound his fist against the search periscope in frustration. He couldn't even think about just _how_ damned frustrated he was with Stewart's evasiveness, only about pulling the boat back out of the tight spot into which they'd worked it.

"Pass the word forward to secure the outer doors," Hachman snapped at Quigley, whose hands were near spastic as he fumbled with the mouthpiece resting on his chest. Hachman looked up toward the sealed bridge hatch, which, blessedly, showed no signs of leaking. His pulse quickened and his throat dried out with unreasonable rapidity as the whooshing rumble of the destroyer's propellers carried through the water and penetrated the conning tower.

"He's coming in on our starboard beam," Brunell said. "He's got his throttle open wide! He's attacking!"

"Right full rudder!" Stewart shouted forward. He swung around to brace himself between the periscopes as Gale acknowledged the order and heaved the wheel to the right. The roar of the destroyer's slashing propeller blades drowned out Sandow's report that the dive bubble was zeroed at 200 feet.

Thus the destroyer and the _Hammerjaw_ circled each other several degrees, only by which maneuver the latter avoided a close-run thing. Rather than its intended beam attack, the destroyer wound up rolling a dozen depth charges off its stern racks well off the _Hammerjaw_ 's starboard side, blasting another handful into the air from its launchers amidships. Nevertheless, these high-flying charges were set to hit the water separated from each other by almost a hundred feet, sink on either side of the _Hammerjaw_ and prevent it from turning away unscathed as they fulfilled the purpose of their invention. The destroyer spooled up to flank speed as it roared overhead, the better to avoid being damaged by the blasts from its own depth charges directly underneath it.

"Brace yourselves, gang," Serino muttered to the crewmen closest to him. "This is where we start earning that submarine hazard pay."

"What, and forget all about what it was like in training?" The sailor controlling the bow planes had far less success controlling the tremor in his voice.

"Might as well. This'll make - " Serino never got so far as comparing training exercises to a pleasure cruise on the Thames River, for it was at that moment that the first two horrific explosions smashed at the _Hammerjaw_ from both sides.

It is not possible for a man who has never been depth-charged to describe the experience accurately. The noise was horrendous, if a polite term could be employed - not only in volume, but in the gurgling, ringing blast of hundreds of pounds of trinitrotoluene detonating in deep water. Still, the noise couldn't be much worse than the uncertainty of whether the hull would stay intact or cave in. As it was, the shock waves from the charges, amplified by the incompressible water in which they were propagating, crashed against the hull and carried straight on into it, flailing at the already pressured air inside. With nowhere to escape, the air, foul and saturated as it was, squeezed against anything it could get its molecules around. Light bulbs shattered and ears popped, deck plates heaved and telephone handsets dislodged, men shouted and hands grabbed frantically for anchors - but this was only the beginning.

Serino deliberately jammed himself into the nook between the pump manifold and the auxiliary helm, the better to prevent himself from hitting a lever and blowing a ballast tank by accident. The planesmen had little to hold onto besides their own control wheels and a great deal of determination not to lose control of the boat's dive angle. Try as Sandow might to hold onto the conning-tower ladder, his rib cage became too closely acquainted with the gyro table when the third depth charge went off abaft and above the conning tower. Stewart's yelp as he fell against the attack periscope was surpassed only by his agonized grunt when Hachman tumbled against him.

Grabbing at the hoist rods of the periscope, Stewart tried to pull himself back to his feet, but the string of depth charges that exploded in quick succession close above the _Hammerjaw_ prevented him getting very far. Going off at progessively greater depths, the charges blasted at the _Hammerjaw_ 's starboard side first, directly above its main deck, and worst of all on the port side, closest to its keel depth. The detonations were like firecrackers going off inside men's heads. A spectacular California earthquake could have scarcely done justice to the shaking and heaving and pounding of those atrocious explosions slamming against the hull.

Gauge glasses cracked and shattered, men cried out and cursed with the deafening shocks. The very air they were breathing pressed against their ears and lungs with each roiling concussion. In the forward torpedo room, Gunderson caught a second's glance at the sea-pressure gauge on the bulkhead before a shock knocked him off balance between the tubes. Later he wouldn't even be sure if he had actually seen the needle jerk from 90 psi to almost 200 with the sudden increase in outside pressure from all that displaced water.

It seemed an hour before the attack mercifully ended and the _Hammerjaw_ slowly rolled back upright. Tenderly feeling his ribs, Sandow peered through painfully squinting eyes at the inclinometer above the bow plane wheel. The bubble had slipped to about two degrees down.

"Watch your depth," he grunted through clenched teeth. "Hold her at two hundred!"

"Yes, sir," the bow planesman panted. Egged on by Sandow slapping his upper arm, he shook his head rapidly and heaved on his wheel to angle the bow upward slightly. "Japs sure know how to conduct a training exercise, don't they?"

"The hell they do," Serino growled. "They ain't shootin' to train, they're shootin' to kill!"


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical figures appearing in this chapter include: Rear Admiral Robert H. English, Commander Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet; and Commander Edward K. Walker, Operations Officer, SubPac.

In somewhat of a daze, Hachman shook his head and then reached up to feel for it and reassure himself that it was still perched on his shoulders. His right knee suddenly ached like hell from resting on the deck. He gripped the plot desk in one hand and the attack periscope in the other, heaved himself upright, and extended his hand to Brill, pulling him up from his prostration beside the desk. Momentarily too shaken to speak, Brill nodded his thanks and retook his post at the desk as Hachman turned to appraise the rest of the conning tower. Most everyone else had managed to remain upright: Zalecki was tightly gripping an electrical conduit above the TDC, and Liscomb and Brunell were reapplying their headphones as Gale pulled at the helm to resume his last ordered course. However, the man who had issued that order was another problem.

Stewart was still half-kneeling, half-sitting between the periscopes. Puffing, he stared fixedly at the deck in front of him. He looked to be in a state of mild shock - not an ideal condition, in anyone's diagnostic manual, for the captain of a submarine under attack.

"Sir, you all right?" Hachman asked, moving toward him.

As he feared, Stewart didn't respond right away, just crouched there eying the deck as if he'd spotted a giant venomous spider crawling down the bulkhead. In truth, during the attack he had chanced to look down the hatch to the control room and seen the view through the hatch skewing sideways, as if the conning tower was about to be torn clean off the main deck.

"Captain!" Hachman burst out.

The burst seemed to jolt Stewart out of his momentary catatonia. His head jerked up, he inhaled sharply and looked directly up at Hachman - who felt nothing comforting about the cold, indecisive fear he saw in the widened blue eyes. Stewart was scared to death and utterly failing to conceal it.

"Yes - yes, I'm all right," Stewart said, swallowing hard as he struggled back to his feet. But Hachman was by no means convinced. He'd seen that same look on the faces of junior officers making their very first dive on a training submarine, preoccupied with the uncertainty of whether or not they would surface again.

He moved up behind Brunell and nudged his arm. "What have you got on those destroyers?" he asked.

"One....one fast set of screws fading off the port quarter," Brunell said, breathing deeply. "Must be the one that just socked us."

"Ready or not, here comes another one, from the carrier's bearing," Liscomb added. "And this bastard's pinging like a station clock!"

"He's doing _what?"_ Stewart blurted out.

"Pinging, sir. Echo-ranging. The Japs have active sonar and they know how to use it."

"I _know_ what echo-ranging is, Mr. Liscomb," Stewart snapped. "You know how that's going to turn out if we don't lose these sons of bitches!" He huffed away toward the helm, rubbing spastically at his lower jaw. "All ahead one third. Steady on course two eight zero. No sense in giving him a wider target than he already has." Once Gale had repeated the orders and twisted the knob on the speed telegraph, Stewart turned back to the sound gear. "Can you still make out the flattop?"

"He's hauling off at a good clip on our starboard bow," Liscomb answered. "Range is opening, must be out to at least six thousand yards by now."

"God damn it, we lost him," Hachman growled.

"And exposed ourselves to attack," Stewart said. "We'll lose more than a target if we can't get away from them."

Focused on the overhead, he missed Hachman's glare, a seething, livid glare, a glare that could have grabbed him by the shirt and shaken him silly if it possessed the exec's great fists. Hachman bit his tongue, but his mind was screaming bloody murder. _What in God's name are you doing, you cowering cur! Why aren't you going back to periscope depth and trying to punch a hole in that bastard? You don't just run for the corner in a fight, you jab the other guy off balance, catch him in a cross, you duck his swing and then come in alongside him to throw an uppercut! Are we fighting a war here, or taking a diving lesson?_

His throat strained to hold the ranting rebuke in check. They _were_ fighting a war here, and they _were_ under attack. He couldn't imagine a worse conceivable moment to have a public disagreement with the skipper when the men had their survival to fight for.

"The tin can that's coming in on us, what's his range now?" Stewart asked.

"Estimated four thousand yards...." Liscomb paused and pressed a hand to his right earphone, his eyes turning wild with anxiety. "Jesus H. Christ. There's another one coming out of his baffles! Bearing zero zero three and zero zero five relative!"

"Left full rudder!" Stewart snapped. "Control, be ready for a hard dive!"

 _That's taking us_ away _from the carrier!_ Hachman's mind roared, but it was hopeless to try and get another crack at that heavy now - unless Stewart was trying to bring his stern tubes to bear for a desperate long-range shot. Even if he'd had a sudden reversal of his panic attack and decided to rear into action, he still had to fool those destroyers into thinking he'd abandoned the attempt.

Suddenly a loud, ringing _bing!_ echoed into the hull. All eyes rose, and all ears flexed as another _bing!_ bit into men's eardrums. The Japanese knew how to use that active sonar, all right. Now the men of the _Hammerjaw_ would find out just how well.

"He's still on long scale," Liscomb said. "Hasn't got a fix on us yet."

"What - what about the first one?" The strain in Stewart's voice was discernible, and only Hachman and Quigley spotted his Adam's apple jerking up and down in a gulp.

"He's passing astern to starboard and making slow turns," Brunell said. "Might be waiting till his buddy up there has us in his sights."

"Rudder amidships!" Stewart barked at Gale. "All ahead full! Get us out from under them, damn you!"

That did it. He wasn't going for a stern shot on the carrier or any of its escorts. Until now, Hachman had been hopeful, but they were already too deep to shoot and the captain intended that they scurry away and go deeper - hide from the destroyers no matter what. To restrain himself from decking the man in fury, he had to pace toward the aft end of the conning tower: the sonar pings followed him almost as if they meant to exact some sort of personal vendetta on him. He caught a perturbed glance over the shoulder from Zalecki at the TDC, and a pleading stare from Brill on the other side of the attack plot. He had drawn only two lines on the map, and they didn't even come close to converging.

 _Bing!_ The sonar bounces were steady, but their cadence had increased, from every five seconds to every three. _Bing!_ Liscomb looked up, stare intense, mouth dropping open.

"Destroyer on our starboard bow is picking up speed," he reported.

"All stop," Stewart ordered. "With any luck, he'll drop too far ahead."

_Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing!_

"Won't have any luck there, sir," Liscomb said, half-turning toward him. "He's gone to short scale! He's on us!"

"Good God," Stewart muttered under his breath. To reaffirm Liscomb's report, the sonar pings had suddenly increased to two pings per second and the destroyer's propellers were now audible, accelerating.

_Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing!_

"All ahead flank!" Stewart hollered. "Control, hard dive! Take her to three hundred feet, fast!"

"Three hundred feet, aye!" Sandow shouted back. His orders to the diving crew went unheard under the rising bellow of the accelerating propellers. The _Hammerjaw_ lurched and then lurched again - first with its own jolt of acceleration to maximum speed and then with a sharp down angle. The destroyer swept overhead, pinging all the while: depth charges rolled two at a time down its canted stern racks and dropped into the water like logs tumbling down a cliff.

The _Hammerjaw_ was still plunging toward 300 feet when the first pair of charges went off.

Another dozen or more followed, just as closely as the last attack. Staggering through that unreal gauntlet of blasting, wracking concussions was not unlike being in a city bus hurtling down a collapsing mountain, hitting ruts, potholes, huge rocks, and fallen tree trunks along the way, not to mention swerving to avoid repeated tumbles off the edge: except, Hachman would later ruminate balefully, that a metropolitan transit vehicle typically had seats, poles, hand straps, and most importantly air brakes to prevent its passengers from tumbling about its interior like rag dolls. The _Hammerjaw_ was not designed for such trivial safety features, or really _any_ safety feature save for hiding deep in the water and hoping some thermal feature of that water would allow it to elude the destroyer. Several of the damage control men in the crew compartment dived for the safety of bunks, covering their heads, but the bunks offered them no protection whatsoever from the ungodly racket.

No section of the boat felt this crushing assault so keenly as the three aft compartments. The cork insulation lining the interior bulkheads shattered and splattered all over the decks - and the men - in the engine rooms. The engines themselves rocked from side to side as the depth-charge explosions smashed the _Hammerjaw_ on one beam, then the other, pummeled its stern downward and threatened to tear the aft superstructure loose from the pressure hull.

Hachman clung with leech-like tenacity to the edge of the plotting table as he tried to hold himself on his feet amidst the murderous shock waves. Brill had not the strength to anchor himself similarly. A violent concussion above the afterdeck flung him forward, collided him with Zalecki and brought both of them down in a heap. Another light bulb shattered under the pressure, plunging the conning tower into darkness. The punishing blasts seemed to soften somewhat, the noise fading ever so slightly, as the _Hammerjaw_ plunged deeper, away from those holy terrors.

Were they all imagining it? Thinking wishfully? Or was the attack actually easing off?

Resting on his already pain-rent knees, Hachman clung to the plotting table and tried to pull back to his feet as another string of concussions battered at the aft end of the _Hammerjaw_ \- but these nowhere near as violent as the first attack. The second oncoming destroyer had dropped its charges, but neither Brunell nor Liscomb had had a chance to report it as they regained their footing and reaffixed their headphones. Hachman took a deep breath and expelled it in a long sigh of relief as this newest barrage exploded well above and astern. The destroyers evidently hadn't caught onto the _Hammerjaw_ 's burst of speed or they'd have dropped sooner, he mused. In any case, their charges were set too shallow. Maybe the intelligence reports that Japanese depth charges couldn't be set much deeper than 200 feet or so were factual.

He flattened one foot firmly on the deck, heaved himself up and then planted the other, stabilizing himself against the diminishing shocks. He grabbed a portable battle lantern from the bulkhead and shined it forward. The other men in the conning tower were also coming back on balance, except notably for Stewart, who still rested on one knee between the periscopes, eyes squeezed shut and lungs working like bellows. Hachman couldn't quit a feeling that his captain's balance and stability were affected on more than a physical level.

"All compartments report damage!" Hachman barked at Quigley.

For the second time his voice snapped Stewart out of what looked to a layman's eye like a psychotic state. Stewart climbed back to his feet as the _Hammerjaw_ 's shudders and rattles died away to distant vibrations. The depth charge explosions were little more now than muffled rumbles carrying through the water from a hundred feet or more above the boat.

Brill and Zalecki were in no competition to see who could get to his feet faster. Nor was Brunell trying to beat Liscomb to refocusing his auditory processes back outside the hull. O'Donnell's arms shook involuntarily as he leaned across the hatch, flipping on the dim, caged emergency lanterns, whose thick glass could withstand far more pressure than ordinary light bulbs. Quigley relayed the first damage reports momentarily: the topside hatch in the aft engine room had been jarred loose and was taking on a distressing amount of water. In the aft torpedo room, one of the reload torpedoes had broken free and slipped forward until its propellers jammed into the engineering log shack. The diesels had been shaken with such severity that the retaining bolts of both aft engines had been yanked loose, calling their functionality into question.

 _Great, that's just what we need,_ Hachman thought darkly to himself. _We just got the goddamned things installed and now we might lose two of them. And with a gutless skipper on top of all that...._

Indeed, Stewart's degree of physical stress seemed to rise geometrically with each damage report Quigley read off. Observing his respiration level, Hachman was tempted to inquire as to the oxygen content of the conning tower, but there was no quick and easy way of calculating that. He swiped perspiration from his upper lip - the temperature was insufferable, and yet suffer from it all hands unequivocally did - and moved forward, ready to catch Stewart if he should crumple at this critical moment. Yet somehow, the captain straightened up momentarily, pulled himself together, and took a long step over to the control-room hatch.

"Report, Mr. Sandow," he demanded.

"Caught her at three hundred and ten feet, sir," Sandow answered. "I'm pumping from after trim to compensate for the leak in the engine room."

"Very well. Sound?" Stewart turned around to hang back over Liscomb's shoulder.

"Having trouble making out those tin cans, sir." Liscomb shook his head, more in concentration than in confusion. "Awful lot of disturbance out there, still. But they're up there on both quarters, I can tell that much."

"What about the one that hit us earlier?"

"Lost him a while ago, sir," Brunell replied. "Last I heard of him, he was passing astern to starboard."

"Must be trying to join back up with the carrier before it disappears over the horizon," Hachman muttered. "Meanwhile, his little pals up there pin us down and give the heavy time to make a clean getaway."

"What kept them from resetting their charges, though?" Stewart mused. "If they were pinging, they should have caught onto us right away when we started to go deeper."

"I'd say with the turns they were making, they just plain didn't have time," Liscomb said matter-of-factly.

 _"Or_ they simply can't hit us this deep." Stewart took a slow breath, lips curling into a small smile, as he backed against the far bulkhead. "Right full rudder. All ahead two-thirds. If we can't hear them, maybe they can't hear us."

It was as if the _Hammerjaw_ 's problems had all but faded from his mind.

The boat's primary problem, however, had usurped Chief Marcotte's full attention. He could pay no mind to the report relayed by the telephone talker in the aft engine room. As far as he was concerned, the after trim tank could only lose a fraction of the weight the aft engine room could bear if it flooded completely. He stood at the base of the ladder under the hatch, issuing rapid-fire, on-the-feet orders and assuring passage of the proper tools to the men battling the leak. Two of the rods connecting the dog wheel to the watertight seal had broken, compromising the seal and admitting several incisory streams of water under nearly 135 psi of sea pressure. So far, all Marcotte could hear was a bit of clanking and a lot of cursing, but no ebb of the water streaming through the rupture.

One of the machinists ducked through the saline shower in front of Marcotte and didn't trouble to wipe his face before he thrust two new sets of rods and bolts at him. Marcotte gave them only a cursory glance to appraise their suitability before he batted the machinist aside and passed up the hardware. The machinist and the auxiliaryman working on the leak, though, had an increasingly hard time maintaining their grip on the ladder as the leak saturated them further.

Annoyed though he was at having to repeat the orders he gave them, Marcotte well understood that they simply couldn't hear him as clearly as normal over the spray and the clatter of their tools. Yet that gave him a dubious advantage that only he, as a chief petty officer, had prerogative to exercise. He pounded one fist on the railing in front of the port engine and twisted forward. "Ask the control room how deep we are," he hollered at the telephone talker, loudly enough to be heard by the two repairmen.

The response came back momentarily: "Three hundred and ten feet, Chief."

"God _damn_ it!" Marcotte shouted. "Nichols, what the hell are you doing up there? We're below three hundred and fifty feet already! Any deeper and you'll get squashed like the bug you are, right along with the rest of us!"

"Christ almighty, Chief, I'm tryin' to keep the water outa my eyes so's I can see what the fuck I'm doin'!" the machinist retorted. In his heightened desperation to secure the hatch, his wrench slipped, his grip broke, and he half-fell, half-jumped from the ladder to the deck.

"Shit," Marcotte snapped. He slapped the back of Nichols's head and gesticulated toward the aft bulkhead. "You, go stand by the salvage air valve in case you have to make yourself useful. Dallison, get up there and get on that leak! Come on, God damn it, move it, we ain't got the whole fuckin' war!"

The air bubble in the inclinometer was trembling, slipping, trying to avoid showing an up angle that was increasing along with the weight of water astern. Sandow swallowed and turned around to the sailor manning the trim manifold. "How much more can we lighten the after trim?"

"Almost dry now, sir," the trim operator answered.

"Chief, stand by to pump number seven main ballast," Sandow instructed Serino. "Stern planes, give me five degrees down."

Distant, rumbling booms vibrated through the hull. Though they raised many a hair throughout the boat, they raised them no higher than they had than in training. For it was in training that the crew had often heard explosions of this magnitude, the explosions of depth charges dropped by a friendly destroyer exercising with them, training its own crew in setting and releasing charges while acclimating the submariners to the sensory inputs of an attack. Yet the only destroyers anywhere nearby were not flying any Allied flag.

"They've got to be a good half a mile off target," Stewart frowned. "They're dropping in the same place we were fifteen minutes ago."

"Trying to scare us off, would be my guess," Hachman said thoughtfully. "They must know we're not far away. If they were really for giving us a working over, they'd be trying a lot harder to find us." He eyed Stewart, looking for a reaction, but there was none save for blank confusion.

"Aft engine room reports topside hatch secured, sir," Quigley said.

Numerous sighs of relief buzzed about the conning tower. Stewart nodded and made a brief hand gesture. "Pass them a well done," he instructed. "Perhaps we've got a chance of coming out of this now."

And so onward snuck the _Hammerjaw_ , propellers revolving at a minimal rate to conserve as much battery power as possible, drain pump working to clear out the water that had been shipped in the aft engine room. The last functioning enemy carrier could be miles away within the hour that Liscomb and Brunell spent listening to the ocean around them, striving to pick up propeller noises of some kind. Nothing tickled their eardrums: the silence inside the boat seemed even more unnerving than outside, especially after the inescapable horror of those depth charge blasts.

Stewart seemed as content as he was going to get. He paced back and forth between the helm and the sonar gear to give orders or get reports, but not only were there no reports worth a listen, he gave no orders to change speed or depth. An occasional course change to the east or south seemed enough to keep the _Hammerjaw_ out of harm's way, but that brought to Hachman's mind an expression that every American sailor knew well: _"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm's way."_

John Paul Jones had coined that quote during the American Revolution, and it had taken deep, extensive root in naval tradition. Thirty-odd years later, during the War of 1812, the wooden frigate _Constitution_ had fought its legendary "divide and conquer" engagement against two British ships near Madeira. With unmatchable seamanship, Captain Charles Stewart had outmaneuvered, defeated, and captured both of his adversaries at once. The _Hammerjaw_ 's captain had long claimed to be his descendant, but this hide-and-hide-deeper lunacy of his had Hachman seriously questioning the man's veracity.

More than once during that hour, he found himself wondering how the Japanese had detected them in the first place. Not likely that a shining new, state-of-the-art _Gato_ -class fleet submarine had already acquired some mechanical defect that made it audible to sonar 5,000 yards distant. The only likely answers rested either with one of the carrier's aircraft spotting the search periscope, or the sun reflecting from its lens and being spied by a sharp lookout - which never would have happened if Stewart had used the attack periscope instead.

In the midst of such ruminations, Hachman would turn aft to catch a pleading glance from Brill or Zalecki, or catch a contemptuous glance at Stewart from O'Donnell or Quigley. And those same men kept looking to him, silently entreating him to take some sort of action, action he couldn't afford to take and still uphold some trifle of military discipline. A submerged submarine in the middle of a massive sea battle was no venue for anarchy.

He briefly consulted his wrist watch in the midst of raising his arm to mop his forehead on his sleeve. "It's been almost two hours now, skipper," he murmured toward Stewart. "We haven't even picked up a gurgle. Must have gotten ourselves into a thermal layer."

Stewart didn't reply. He no longer seemed shocked, but he was still blank and unresponsive. No one had yet invented a means of determining if they had penetrated a thermal layer - a region of colder, denser water that could deflect probing sonar and effectively hide a submarine from its would-be killers on the surface. Stewart wouldn't take any risks without being certain - hell, judging from his discharge of duty thus far, he probably wouldn't take any risks anyway. He stared fixedly over Liscomb's shoulder at the sonar dial, which gyrated about in an endless circle without returning so much as a bubble popping. He next looked over Gale's shoulder at the gyrocompass, which showed a southeasterly course. Then he bent over the hatch. "Mr. Elwood, what do you estimate our position?" he queried.

"A....about twenty-nine north, one seventy-seven west," Elwood replied after a consultory moment.

"Bending our limits a bit," Stewart muttered. "All stop. I want absolute silence about the decks. Control, bring us up to two hundred feet, slowly."

"Two hundred feet, aye." Sandow paused in the briefest to shoot a nonplussed look at Elwood before issuing his orders to the diving planes and trim manifold. With a five-degree rise showing in the inclinometer, the _Hammerjaw_ inched surfaceward like a whale about to take a breath of air.

"First sound you pick up, I want to know about it before I hear it," Stewart instructed sternly.

"Yes, sir," Liscomb replied in a detached tone. The hull popped and murmured gently as the _Hammerjaw_ rose, Liscomb pressed his earphones tighter against his head and Brunell held his breath.

The depth gauge presently settled itself on 200, but not without several tersely muttered orders from Sandow to the diving crew as he tried to prevent the boat from rising too high too quickly. He wondered if Stewart had had some kind of lapse in judgment to forget that some propulsion was necessary to maintain trim, but the only thing that interested Stewart in this moment was the sonar dial and the two men standing in front of it, what they possibly could tell him.

As the _Hammerjaw_ slowed from crawl to drift, the hydrophones swept once, twice, three times, and no reaction came from either man.

"Nothing, sir," Brunell said finally.

"Dead calm here, too," Liscomb concurred.

"Well, they've gotta be up there _somewhere,"_ Hachman muttered. "Even if they turn around and run off home, they've still got to turn one-eighty and sail right back past us."

"Fleet they have, why would they?" Stewart said lugubriously.

"If they _are_ still advancing...." Hachman let the thought hang.

"You men are positive there's nothing within sonar range?" Stewart inquired.

"Not unless they're using sampans," Brunell said dryly.

"I very much doubt that." Stewart paused, sighed, and edged toward the hatch. "All ahead one-third," he said to Gale. "All right, Control, bring us up to periscope depth, nice and easy."

"Periscope depth, aye, sir," Sandow responded, trying to annul the excitement from his voice.

Propellers again at slow rotation, the _Hammerjaw_ crept shallower. 150 feet and it was almost within reach of the sun's rays, 100 feet and a large enough air bubble from the ballast tanks would have given it away all too easily. Periscope depth and the sea troughs reached down toward it, closer and closer, as if trying to grab the _Hammerjaw_ by the tips of its periscopes and yank it back to the surface. Stewart stepped sideways and almost hesitantly moved in aft of the search scope.

An odd mix of relief and dismay prevailed in the conning tower when the periscope search revealed nothing more than the sonar sweeps had. They'd been hiding in the deep for so long that there were no destroyers up there to meet them, for the striking force had gotten clean away - might be blasting Midway again or worse, creaming the American carriers, wherever they were. Even with three carriers out of action, they had more than enough firepower to sink both the American force and the island. What ever next?

* * *

Although the tension level in the operations office at the Pearl Harbor submarine force headquarters was comparable to the conning tower of the _Hammerjaw_ , the office had a definite advantage in elbow room. Ten men occupied both spaces, but those in the operations office were spread out over a vastly greater distance before a large wall chart of the Central Pacific. At the middle of the gathering, his posture as straight and pointed as the twin silver stars pinned to his collar, Rear Admiral Robert English stared in turn at each of the marked submarine positions around Midway. Around him congregated two squadron commanders, four division commanders, two staff officers, and his operations officer, Commander Edward Walker, standing closest to the chart shifting the positions of each submarine based on their latest position reports. At length a chief yeoman approached the chart bearing a handful of message flimsies.

"Latest news, Commander," he announced as he passed the flimsies to Walker.

"Thank you, Chief." Quickly Walker flipped through the messages with nary a show of emotion. "From the _Grouper_ ," he said, holding up one slip. "Sighted a formation of enemy aircraft, driven into a deep dive. Apparently they barely pulled her out of it in one piece. Took over a hundred depth charges from the escorts."

"A _hundred?"_ One of the division commanders voiced the group's collective incredulity.

"What about the striking force, any shots taken?" Admiral English demanded.

"Afraid it doesn't sound that way so far." Walker hefted another message. " _Hammerjaw_ almost scored, but same story, driven away by the escorts. She spotted three flattops going up in smoke, though. That leaves the Japs with only one carrier still operational. Admiral Spruance must be having a hell of a field day."

"Think we ought to pass this on to Admiral Nimitz, sir?" one of the staffies inquired.

"No, I don't figure we'll be telling him anything he doesn't already know," English dissented. "But radio _Grouper_ and _Hammerjaw_ and tell them to keep their eyes peeled for the Main Body. If they're still making an advance, _that's_ what Admiral Nimitz will need to know."

"Yes, sir," Walker said. "What about the _Nautilus?_ She hasn't been heard from, but her assigned sector isn't far off."

There was a pensive pause as English considered. The shortcomings borne of the _Nautilus_ 's size and age were common knowledge in the submarine force, but every fleet boat in the eastern Pacific was deployed around Midway right now and none of them could be spared. That ancient giant simply had to take its chances with the newest and ablest of them.

Finally English nodded. "Send her the same message. Whether we get an answer, at least that'll tell us if she's still in the fight."

* * *

"Maneuvering, this is the captain," Stewart muttered into the sound-powered telephone at the aft end of the conning tower. "What's our battery status?"

"Little less than a hundred amps left." The voice of Chief Electrician's Mate Samuel Brigham came back somewhat out of breath. "We can get maybe another four hours out of her at minimal speed."

"Very well." Stewart hung up the phone before he sighed and bit his lip apprehensively. Four hours' worth of juice left in the batteries and it was only 1600. There would more than likely still be some light in the sky by the time they were forced to surface. He turned and shuffled forward to the sound gear. "Anything?"

"Still all clear," Brunell muttered with an edge in his tone. He caught a sympathetic glance from Liscomb and forced himself to crack a tiny smile. Captain or not, Stewart's unceasing queries were becoming tiresome. Liscomb didn't even see the need for them to still be doubled up on the sound when -

"Captain, from the radio room," Quigley said abruptly. "Action dispatch coming in from Pearl."

"Take it, Mr. Liscomb," Stewart ordered.

"Yes, sir." Liscomb was as happy as he was hasty to shed his headphones and lay below, where at least half a dozen sets of curious eyes followed him aft to the radio shack.

In a minute he was back below the conning-tower hatch with the message in hand. "From Commander Walker in ComSubPac Operations," he read. "'Main Body believed to be continuing its advance from the northwest. Invasion forces expected to attempt a landing on Midway within thirty-six hours. Proceed to latitude thirty north, longitude one seventy-eight west. Continue search for Main Body. If contact is made, report to fleet headquarters immediately. If position is favorable, engage and destroy enemy fleet units.'"

"Well, we'll do as Commander Walker asks," Stewart decreed. "Helm, come right to - "

"Got another intercept, sir!" The call-out carried forward from the radio shack. "Action report from Task Force Sixteen to Pearl!"

"Belay that!" Stewart snapped at Gale. With a grimace he straightened his posture and sighed, his stress level almost tangible in the air as he half-turned. "Take the conn, Mr. Hachman. I've got to figure out what in the hell is going on around here." Without waiting for an acknowledgement, down the hatch he went, leaving every eye remaining in the conning tower hyperfocused on the exec.

At the fire-control panel on the port side, Chief O'Donnell was first to break his stare and aim it down the hatch like a hunting rifle, his head shaking with disdain. "I'll tell ya what's goin' on around here, you yellow son of a bitch - "

"Stow it, Chief." Hachman's command was sharply bitten off, his glare harsh.

"Sorry, sir, but you can't tell me you're standing with this useless sack of shit," O'Donnell protested, gesticulating toward the hatch.

"I can tell you this is the way it is, and like it or not, we have to take what's in front of us. Let's focus on sticking out the rest of this battle, Chief. We've still got an enemy fleet to search for."

Presently Stewart returned to the conning tower with slow, uninspired steps and a thoughtful countenance, which betrayed no awareness of the exchange that had just taken place behind his back. "What's the dope, skipper?" Hachman ventured.

"The _Yorktown_ 's been disabled," Stewart related. "But her planes nailed the _Hiryu_ , clobbered it with four heavy bombs. That leaves all four of Yamamoto's carriers either sunk or crippled." He squelched the whispers of quiet exultation with another proclamation. "Our own orders are unchanged. _Enterprise_ and _Hornet_ are regrouping for another attack on the enemy fleet, assuming we locate it. But the Japs have a number of their own submarines in the area, ergo we'll continue to double the sonar watch and maintain extra vigilance."

"So our primary objective is still the Main Body?" Hachman surmised.

Stewart nodded. "Secure from General Quarters. We may find ourselves in a search pattern for a while." To Gale he instructed: "Come right to course zero zero zero and make turns for three knots. We'll hold it for now so we don't pass ahead of them and find ourselves outflanked. We may even catch a few stragglers from the striking force. Mark my words, gentlemen, before this battle is done, we'll have a kill to report."

If he was expecting an enthusiastic, fist-pumping response from anyone aboard, he received nothing but a few sidelong glances. Hachman, especially, knew his statement to be nothing but a load of false bravado. He'd seen enough. He'd seen the real Douglas Stewart - the one the fire illuminated when it was at its brightest and hottest. Regardless of his genealogy, this was not a man who would ever divide and conquer two enemy ships with a single salvo of torpedoes. This was one who would crack in the heat of that fire like miscast metal, put the boat and entire crew at risk, and not even realize it until it was all over.


	4. Chapter 4

As the _Hammerjaw_ 's crew secured from battle stations and resumed the regular watch, O'Donnell was the first one down the hatch into the control room. Hachman followed him and stopped him short of relieving Serino at the pump manifold. Gesturing to Sandow, he ordered: "Bud, you stay on the dive for now. Masterson, you, up here and take the pump manifold. You two, I want to see in the goat locker right now." He aimed two fingers at Serino and O'Donnell, who took due notice of both the severity of his tone and the acid in his stare. Exchanging a look, the two chiefs sidled away from the diving station and laid forward to the CPO quarters behind him.

"Seems to me you need a reminder, O'Donnell," Hachman began in a low but petulant voice. "You're responsible for a top-heavy lot of sailors on these decks, from lookouts to navigators. So no matter how you feel about the skipper, you can't be openly questioning him in front of them. You got me?"

O'Donnell sighed. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Hachman nodded. "Go ahead, Chief, lay it out."

"Me and Ray, between us, we've got damn near fifty years in the boats. Used to be you could tell if a skipper could hack it or not during his first patrol, but at least in peacetime we could figure out one way or the other without anyone gettin' hurt. But this sure as hell ain't peacetime, Commander. If anything, it's the worst time you can imagine to find out that our skipper's no fucking good under fire."

"Be that as it may, there's a time and there's a place to speak up about these things. A major battle isn't the time, and the conning tower is _never_ the place."

"I'm not gonna disagree with you, Mr. Hachman," Serino muttered. "But I'm not gonna disagree with Benny, either. It's one thing to keep the boys in line, it's another to watch 'em all get knocked down one by one. How often did we all hear it just in sub school, that all it takes is one guy to fuck up and take the entire boat down with him?"

"And if that one guy happens to be the skipper...." O'Donnell let his thought trail off.

"What are you two trying to tell me?" Hachman said askance.

"There's been scuttlebutt ashore. Half a dozen skippers been relieved for avoiding a fight since the war started. They think the Japs are gonna behave just like our ships did during fleet exercises and they're in for a hell of a nasty surprise. Suppose we get into another fix like we did today? Are we gonna let him be that one guy?"

"Benny, you know what the exec's getting at," Serino said. "We gotta wait for another time to settle this, because we can't afford to tear the whole crew apart when we're at sea."

"And suppose we don't get another chance because he's got us all killed?" O'Donnell retorted.

"All right, both of you, listen." Hachman's tone was like a dicing knife. "Put a lid on it, and make it airtight. That's an order, and so is this - no more talking shit about the skipper while we're underway. I don't want to hear it from any of the crew either, you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Serino grunted. O'Donnell's repeat of the statement was considerably more begrudging.

It was at this opportune moment that Marcotte appeared in the doorway, unbuttoning his sopping dungaree shirt. The obviously strained conference between the executive officer and his two fellow chiefs took him aback for a moment, but then after a moment's hesitation, he excused himself and sidled aft to his locker.

"Got that hatch squared away, Eddie?" Serino seized the opportunity to change the subject.

"Yeah, it'll hold for now," Marcotte answered. "It's number three and four main engines that I'm worried about, the way them retaining bolts almost cut loose. Sure as hell don't wanna lose 'em and get saddled with another pair of Man Whores."

"All right, I'll round up Masterson and an auxiliaryman and come have a look in a few minutes."

"You'll excuse me, sir, I gotta get back to work," O'Donnell murmured to Hachman.

"All right, Chief, carry on, but don't forget what I said." Hachman pressed his back against the forward bulkhead to give O'Donnell room to exit. Then he leaned casually against the bunks on the port side and stated: "Make damn sure of those engines, will you? I'd hate to think the yards are running short on Wintons and got nothing left to give us but those godforsaken H.O.R.s."

"You really think that could be a problem, sir?" Marcotte's concern was genuine.

"I wouldn't count it out. Damned if I know what the War Production Board has in mind, but I've got a younger brother who's a locomotive fireman back home. Probably be one of the first to lose his job if they ever give up on steam for diesel power. The way he tells it, GM is trying to corner the market on railroad engines as well as marine diesels."

"You could always try and shanghai him into the Navy if he loses his spot, sir," Marcotte said with a small smile.

"What makes you think he hasn't tried already?" Hachman said wryly. "But he's Two-B because of his job, so they made him think twice about enlisting. I managed to talk him out of it over a few letters."

"Aah, that's too bad, sir," Serino said in mock despair. "Bet he coulda made Chief hisself in a couple of years."

"Coulda, shoulda, woulda." Hachman flashed a smile that was genial but forced. "Excuse me, fellas. I'm gonna go see if any of the eggs are still real." He sidestepped out of the CPO quarters and loped around the corner to the wardroom.

As it turned out, a sobering few of the real eggs had survived the depth charging. Real or powdered, however, Hachman's mind was anywhere but his eggs as he sat at the forward end of the wardroom table. Stewart sat at the aft end, intently focused on a ledger-type book, apparently drafting his patrol report. From what he'd gotten to know of the captain over the past eight months, Hachman could never have foreseen what had just happened at the height of the battle. By submariner standards, Stewart was an old hand, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1926 and submarine school three years later. He was the cold, distant type, the disciplinary type, the all-business type who ran a ship tight enough to cut off a man's circulation. The merciless drive for perfection he'd visited upon the crew had made them all damned anxious - not just about getting into action, but anxious in general. And yet, whose anxiety did they really have to worry about now? Their own, or their skipper's?

Stewart had yet to even acknowledge Hachman's presence in the wardroom and was thus unaware of the withering scowl his exec threw at him. Despite the whispered confrontation in the goat locker, Hachman knew O'Donnell had put his finger on the spot. A submarine – really, any naval vessel, isolated from home, king and country, even from all other ships, in the middle of a million square miles of ocean – ran just as highly on morale as on orders. In Hachman's opinion, a happy ship was an efficient ship, and a happy ship was happier still if the officers inspired confidence and faith from the enlisted men, instead of fear and regret. Officers were trained to be leaders, knowledgeable, superior and well-disciplined: but Hachman attended the school of thought that enlisted men were just that – not oxen, not tools, but _men._ And men had to know what they had to do in a crisis to keep themselves and their shipmates alive, and they didn't need a commander who couldn't make such decisions with a cool head.

"Tell me you're not looking forward to powdered eggs, Bill," Stewart cut off Hachman's reverie.

Hachman chortled, glancing at his half-cleaned plate. "No, sir. Just....my mind's elsewhere."

"I hope elsewhere is a little further west than where we are now."

"More or less. Truth to say, sir, it's a lot further west sometimes."

"Like the coast of Japan?"

"If that's the first place we're likely to find dry land."

"There is that possibility," Stewart said blandly.

"I'd rather it was a certainty. Then we could all go home and get on with our lives that much sooner." Hachman shook his head and smiled faintly. If anything, his thoughts were occupied with the diesel engines and what their manufacture - and availability - could mean for the submarine force, not to mention his brother's heavy labors on the railroad. He loathed to think the young lad might be contributing to his own redundancy by hauling engine parts and lubricants to diesel manufacturing plants, but who could say what direction events would take before the end of this battle, much less the end of this godforsaken war. And thus it was that Hachman's mind finally furled its sails, coming to rest in the upper Hudson Valley of upstate New York.

Once, on a damp spring day of 1918 in Johnsonville, Billy Hachman – himself a few months shy of his eighth birthday – had come home from school to find his four-year-old sister Elizabeth excitedly squealing in the front yard. She had grabbed him by his empty hand and yanked him into the house, bouncing and braying as she directed him to their parents' bedroom. Billy had been stunned to enter the bedroom and find his exhausted mother cradling a newborn baby boy, so stunned that his beloved schoolbooks fell forgotten to the floor beside him with a flat smack.

They hadn't expected the birth for another three weeks. Billy was too young to understand fully, but he knew the influenza outbreak was far from over, and his parents were desperately worried for their new son's survival. Too young to understand he might have been, but not too young to take it upon himself to look after the baby. Their father, Kurt, worked a minimum of ten hours a day repairing farm machinery and tools: their mother, Lydia, put in far longer hours making a home for him, herself and the children. With the United States' entry into World War I the year before, they already suffered constant concerns that Kurt would be drafted into service, despite his age and his previous service in the Navy during the Spanish-American War. Billy decided he would do his part to take the load off by minding his younger siblings, lest they – especially his newborn brother – fail to survive some other stage of life.

But even in birth, Robert Jonathan Hachman had gone his own way and just barely survived. He had gone his own way ever since, lived in his own world into adulthood, marched to his own drum throughout school and into his much-desired job as a locomotive fireman for the Boston & Maine Railroad. They had exchanged several letters in the months between the _Hammerjaw_ 's launching and its departure from the West Coast, Robert expressing his desire to enlist in the Navy and his hope that William would put in a good word for him, and William stressing the point that Robert would be classified "2-B", or exempt because his job was essential to national defense. The last letter William had received set his mind at considerable ease: Robert had thought over his options for some time and decided that he had better chances of surviving to make himself useful if he stayed where he was.

However, the last letter William received from Elizabeth before sailing put a slightly different spin on the story: she'd convinced Robert that with their brother in combat on one side of the world and her husband on the other, he had double duty to fulfill by supporting them with war transport. Edwin Tross, whom she'd married in 1937 after a two-year courtship across the Mohawk Valley, would soon have his own share of fighting to carry to his own enemies. Already a staff sergeant in the Army Air Corps, he and his unit were weeks, maybe days, away from taking flight to England to blast the hell out of the Third Reich.

Still, it was a nerve-wracking thought nevertheless. William at sea on a submarine, Robert working his tail off moving troops and tonnage across central New England. Tall, needle-gazed Elizabeth taking part in the "Rosie the Riveter" program, working as a locomotive maintainer in Robert's home terminal at Mechanicville. Edwin, thus far the only in-law of the family, preventing heavy bombers from falling apart over Western Europe. Then Josephine, the youngest and smallest of the Hachman siblings with five years between her and Robert, just finishing high school. God forbid the war should last long enough for her to end up in one branch of service or another – William fully intended to raise holy hell if she joined the Navy's nursing or WAVES corps. But doubts ran very, very high that the war would end without the entire Hachman family making some contribution.

At length, a sharp rap on the bulkhead drew his attention and Stewart's to the aft wardroom doorway. One of the junior electricians, Van Lorden, bearing massive sweat stains about his shoulders and midriff, took a tentative step into the uncovered doorway and politely pardoned himself.

"Chief Brigham reports we're down to less than two hours' worth of battery charge," he reported, panting slightly with exertion. "Still no sound contacts at all. No word from radio, either."

"Very well," Stewart said simply. He returned his undivided attention to his log as Lorden stood hesitantly in the doorway, unsure of whether or not to wait for a dismissal.

Finally Hachman broke the awkward pause. "That's all, Lorden," he said softly.

"Yes, sir. Excuse me, sir."

Lorden exited and Hachman glanced at his watch. "Not quite eighteen hundred. Isn't there a word for those thirty or so minutes between losing your defense and finding cover?"

"I think they usually call it 'exposure'," Stewart said obtusely. He still hadn't so much as glanced up from his patrol-report draft. Almost another full minute passed before he spoke again. "In thirty minutes we'll change course due west. Assuming no additional contacts for an hour thereafter, we'll surface and commence a search pattern."

Hachman nodded without a word. Much as he wanted to ask if that was a move calculated to keep the _Hammerjaw_ as far from enemy activity as possible, it seemed an unwise question to ask. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer anyway.

* * *

The train whistle drifted across the hills, sprawling and undulating where they dipped their feet into the Hudson River, like a high-flying bird of prey coasting lazily on the wind. Early in June, the hills were as green as they could grow. A wisp of gray coal smoke was easy to pick out, especially in abundant sunshine, rising between hilltops and fading into thin air in its own good time.

Kurt Thomas Hachman closed the engine cowling on the farm tractor he'd been banging on for most of the morning and looked over the hood. By now he knew where to look, and even at the age of sixty-three he could easily discern one hill from another, and the smoke drifting skyward between them. The whistle sounded again, and from his vantage point high on a hillside six miles from the riverbank, Kurt recognized the short interval. The train was coming through Eagle Bridge heading west: excellent chance it was Robert making his return trip on an extra freight from East Deerfield.

Kurt smiled wistfully to himself. However many years were left to him, there was no way either of his boys could ever fathom how proud of them he was for doing what must be done to make short work of this war. Neither could the older of his girls. The younger had yet to show her colors, but he could think that over some other time.

"Not feelin' that adventurous spirit taking hold, are ya, Kurt?" The question came from Warren Ericsson, reaching under the tractor to tighten a rod on the mechanical steering gear.

"No, no sort of it," Kurt dissented. "Might be that's my boy out there, the young 'un. Ought to be getting his scrawny behind back home just ahead of me."

"How about the old 'un, you hear much from him anymore?"

"Billy?" Kurt shook his head. "Don't reckon I will for a while. He sailed from the West Coast a few weeks ago, won't have much chance to write till he makes port again."

Warren grabbed the tractor's exhaust manifold and pulled himself half upright to get to his feet. "Well, news been comin' in dribs and drabs. Some kind of massive naval battle shaping up in the Pacific somewhere. Bet you dollars to doughnuts Billy's in on it." He leaned on the tractor beside Kurt and stared out over the hills as the whistle shrilled again for a crossing in Pittstown. "Sure hope he makes it through."

"How's Burton taking his days?" Kurt asked guardedly.

Warren bowed his head. Burton, his oldest son, had been hedging around desperation to enlist but been rejected by the draft board because he was already in his early thirties. Even though there was a certain mutual support among the 4-Fs to make worthwhile contributions to the war effort, Burton had taken his rejection hard. Working as a postman, he didn't relish the thought of delivering any official telegrams from any military departments to any blue-star relatives.

"Well, Four-F is a tough thing to hear these days," Warren said finally. "Poor fella had visions of marching into Germany and dragging Hitler off his pedestal so everyone within arm's length could piss in his face. You know how it is when you miss a chance."

"Even so, some chances are more worth taking than others," Kurt said, somewhat philosophically. "Here, pass me that ajdustable, will you?"

* * *

"Doors and heads, they don't get along!" The warning was familiar by now to anyone standing too close to any door in the Mechanicville roundhouse. Elizabeth Faye Tross, née Hachman, shouldered her way through the back door from the ash pit holding an open box of clean rags in her arms. She plunked the box on the floor next to the foreman's office, stuffed two of the rags into the back pocket of her overalls, wiped her forehead with another and smiled widely as she looked down.

"Hi there, Dusty!" She squatted to rub the head of the small black cat trotting toward her from the nearest service track. Then she reached back into the box, withdrew a water canteen from among the rags, and emptied its contents into a bowl beneath the roundhouse assignment board.

"Here you go, little buddy," Elizabeth cooed. At once Dusty gravitated to the bowl and commenced lapping. With his lustrous, solid black pelt, he'd been aptly named after his likeness to coal dust. And he had a job to do as important as any locomotive maintainer or roundhouse grunt - keep rodents and other pests from interfering in the shop forces' labors. He would also be present to greet a hot, tired engine crew finishing up a run, yet always on the alert for a gribble of lunch meat to fall from a sandwich somewhere.

"Hey, Beth," the roundhouse foreman called out, approaching from the same service track behind Dusty, gesturing over his shoulder. "You know how to run that turntable, don't you?"

"My brother showed me on my first day." Elizabeth rolled her eyes behind closed lids.

"Okay, can you go take it for the rest of your shift? I need Huck Dooley in here to get a couple of engines ready."

"Right," Elizabeth nodded. Without waiting to mince words, she headed toward the stall doors at the front of the roundhouse. How many more times did the same men have to demonstrate to her how to perform the same basic tasks? Not like the house itself was much more difficult to maintain than the locomotives it serviced.

At least she had Robert's massive physical presence to augment her own if it became necessary to scare some of these guys off. She and William both stood over six feet, but somehow Robert had spurted two inches over both of them. Yet Elizabeth had a gaze that could burn bolt holes in the webs of rails so joint bars could be attached. Ordinarily her curly, dark brown hair gathered about her neck and shoulders, but she wore it in a tight bun at the back of her neck when on the job, lest it get caught in a random pipe joint somewhere. Her figure was slender, but after only a few months' work in the roundhouse, she had a wiry strength that no one suspected of her until they saw her heaving a length of injector piping into place on the side of a boiler, and holding it there as she clamped it into a bracket.

She shot a glance over her shoulder at the time clock as she moved off. She had a little over an hour before Edwin arrived to take her home, for what had to be his last leave day and weekend furlough before he and the VIII Bomber Command took off for England with flocks of B-17s and B-24s. It was hard to hold herself to a walk, anticipating these last couple of days with her husband, especially wondering if he had heard the big news.

Within ten minutes, a heavy P-4 class Pacific lumbered up the turntable lead tank-first. Even after Robert had shown her how to operate the turntable, it took some practice for Elizabeth to reduce the gears at just the right moment to swing the table to a stop so that its rails lined up to the inch with those of the roundhouse tracks. At a walking pace, the heavy passenger engine backed onto the long, bridgelike wooden affair, which Elizabeth deftly swung away from the turntable lead and toward the first vacant stall track. The next engine, also a Pacific, was already backing out of the house, but it needed only a few degrees' ride on the turntable so it could back down the lead and onto the ready track. Same for the T-1 class Berkshire that followed it down the lead all of three minutes later.

Here and there, whistles tooted in response to brake signals, safety valves popped, cylinder cocks hissed, and a Delaware & Hudson freight train lumbered westward out of the yard toward the town of Halfmoon. Anticipation built up in Elizabeth again as she looked across the terminal and saw the hefty S-1 Santa Fe-type freight engine cutting off its train in the receiving yard. It might be Robert and it might not, but she knew how fond he was of those long, handsome old luggers with their enclosed cabs and their sixty-inch drive wheels. Most engine crews could be heard to sing the praises of the swift, almost-brand-new R-1 class Mountain-type engines, but Robert held his beloved S-1s to be a pleasure and an ease to stoke, quite comfortably lumbering along at thirty-five miles an hour with their wheels still spinning fast enough to create ample draft on the fire.

He already felt personally threatened by the small diesel-electric switchers pushing and pulling cars up and down the hump on the west end of the yard, where the atrocious screeching of the retarders echoed up and down the valley as they prevented free-rolling freight cars from gathering too much speed.

The S-1 paused on the house track between the coaling dock and the turntable lead, and Elizabeth squinted into the afternoon sunlight - her heart leaped as she saw the road crew disembarking to turn the engine over to a hostler. Coal dust or no, she'd know the towering, meaty frame of the second man to descend from the engine's cab a mile away. Elizabeth bit her lip excitedly - he most likely hadn't heard the big news yet if he'd been out on the line all day. After the hostler had eased the massive engine onto the turntable, the damned thing felt like it took hours to line up with the next vacant stall track.

In another twenty minutes, Elizabeth's shift was over and she was making haste from the roundhouse to the yard office, where she dodged a clerk and the assistant yardmaster on her way up the front steps. She caught Robert on his way out of the locker room, dressed in a somewhat clean dungaree shirt and blue wash pants, carrying a small duffel bag bearing his filthy, sweat-saturated overalls and work shirt. His thin, heavy-jawed face was still grimy and dusty, his hands gnarled with calluses from the coal scoop. But for the breadth of their faces and noses, he and William were easily recognizable as brothers.

"Hey, Bobby!" Elizabeth called out, stopping him from stepping out the back door.

Robert knew the call as much from the diction as from the sound of the voice. When he turned, Elizabeth had not only her ubiquitous needle-sharp intense gaze pointed at him from behind, but a gigantic grin on her face and a newspaper she was waving in the air. Her hand was stained not with newsprint but with grease, and her face, oil-grimed though it was, glowed with elation.

"Oh, hey, Beth," Robert responded. "What's got you looking like the war's already over?"

"You're not far off," Elizabeth exclaimed. She unfolded the newspaper with a snap and gleefully watched Robert's reaction as he took it from her.

The newspaper headline filled half the front page, and Robert's face fell wide open as if he had just been awarded the rest of his life on an expansive country estate in the upper Hudson Valley.

_**U.S. FORCES SINK 2 CARRIERS, SMASH DOZEN OTHER JAP SHIPS AT MIDWAY**_

"My God, oh, my God!" he uttered. "This is - this is incredible! This is what, just today?"

"Just this morning," Elizabeth beamed. "Wanna place a bet that Billy was right in the middle of this?"

"Shhhhhit," Robert breathed slowly. "I just might, and you know damn well I'm not even a bettin' man!"

"Well, come on, let's get to the homestead and see if the folks have heard the news yet!" Elizabeth gleefully slapped her little brother's forearm. "Edwin will be here any minute to take me home. Want to hitch a ride?"

"As long as Ed remembers he's in a car and not a B-seventeen," Robert gibed. He hefted his tool grip and duffel bag, shoved his lunch bucket under his arm and hastened behind Elizabeth back to the roundhouse.

Edwin was not long in arriving, and the zest with which his 1938 Ford coupe charged bouncing and jolting up the access road to the roundhouse was not lost on Elizabeth. She could tell, he _had_ heard the big news. He got out of the car, uncaring of the soot and grease with which Elizabeth smudged his clean service dress uniform as they enthusiastically embraced. One sooty stain brushed clear off the shining staff sergeant stripes sewn to his left jacket sleeve.

Meanwhile, Robert tossed his gear into the trunk and then squashed himself into the back seat. He had to sit diagonally across the width of the car, what with Elizabeth's long legs and Edwin's toned bulk occupying the front.

Edwin did the car's suspension no further favors rattling back down the access road toward Route 67, heading back to the Hachman homestead in Johnsonville. Luckily, traffic was light heading toward the middle of town, but Robert half expected the car to tilt onto two wheels as Edwin hung a right onto the main drag, and he had half a mind to repeat his earlier concern about the car inadvertently taking flight.

"Soooo, about that little gasoline rationing thing...." Robert said, settling for tapping Edwin on the shoulder.

"What about it?" Edwin said nonchalantly. "I won't have much use for this car after this weekend, you know."

"Yeah, but aren't you going to let Beth use it?"

"Well, have you spoken to Hunter about the rationing thing?" Elizabeth gave him a sidelong glance over her shoulder.

"Hunter? Hell, no, I've got nothing to say to that fuck-off."

"Maybe it's worth reminding him. I don't know if this is a division superintendent thing or what, but he's made something like three junkets to East Deerfield and back this week. Doesn't even seem to sweat over how much gasoline he's using."

"Thought he seemed to be getting around an awful lot," Robert mused with a deep frown. "Haven't you said anything?"

"Who, me?" Elizabeth shrugged. "What's the use? Even if I was more than a shop worker, I'm still a woman. You think he'd even notice that I'm speaking?"

"Still, it's better to take the chance than to let that bastard steal gas, if that's what he's doing," Edwin pointed out. "I mean, who the hell does he think he is? Don't you think he knows how much aviation gas we'll need just to get to England from here?"

"Sure as hell doesn't care," Robert growled. "About all I could do for it is drop a bug in somebody's ear, climb up on the engine and hope the bulls can catch him in the act."

In fifteen minutes Edwin veered onto the dusty rural road running across the Hoosic River into Johnsonville. A few miles north of the river, the Hachman family home, a rambling, 1850-built two-storey edifice with an expansive attic, perched on a low hill with a panoramic view of the Berkshire foothills. Ever since the weekend after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a single blue star had been hanging in the front window to denote a son of the house serving in the military. There was no sign of Kurt's work truck, but the family's big cream-colored 1935 Plymouth sedan rested in its usual rut adjacent to the front steps.

Edwin parked alongside the Plymouth and left his uniform jacket in the car, in the hopes of presenting at least some cleanliness as his grime-steeped wife and brother-in-law preceded him into the house. They could already hear the excitement of the radio announcer's voice from the family room at the back of the house. Both Robert and Elizabeth gravitated to the two-seat bench opposite the radio from their mother, who immediately leaned toward the big Sears and Roebuck vacuum-tubed radio to turn up the volume.

Lydia Paige Hachman, née Oosterbaan, was too enraptured by the broadcast to acknowledge or admonish her two filthy offspring for sitting on the bench without cleaning up first.

 _"Just before ten-thirty A.M. local time,"_ the radio announcer bellowed, _"dive bombers from the U.S. carriers_ Yorktown _and_ Enterprise _descended on the Japanese striking force with a fiery vengeance. In less than ten minutes, the scales tipped completely as our intrepid pilots pummeled the Jap fleet with hundred-pound bombs, reducing three of the enemy's front-line carriers to flaming, out-of-control wrecks. High-level bombers also scored hits on two heavy cruisers, causing them to collide._

 _"Later in the day, the sole surviving Japanese carrier counterattacked our fleet with dive bombers and torpedo planes to knock out the_ Yorktown _and leave the brunt of the fighting to the_ Enterprise. _Her dive bombers struck back in less than an hour, and left the fourth enemy carrier in uncontrollable flames."_

Many looks darted about the family room, looks of excitement, looks of elation, looks of brightly burning rekindled hope. Only one look of intrigue knocked about the room and came to rest upon the radio again, a look from Josephine Rose Hachman, sitting transfixed in a forward-leaning pose on a stool behind Lydia.

 _"Latest reports,"_ the announcer continued, _"disclosed that the_ Yorktown _is still afloat as her determined damage-control crews work tirelessly to bring her fires and flooding under control. But in the meantime, the Japanese, their noses bloodied by the total loss of their most important ships and crews, remain in the vicinity of Midway with a formidable surface battle force. The admirals in command of the Pacific fleet anticipate that the Battle of Midway, though a massive, decisive blow to the Imperial Japanese Navy, is far from over. Stay tuned to WSSH Schenectady for the latest developments."_

A languorous Bing Crosby tune emanated from the speaker. Lydia turned the volume back down and sat up straight, an ecstatic smile deepening the creases of her fifty-nine-year-old face. "Well, now!" she exclaimed. "Isn't it about time we heard some encouraging news from the other side of the world!"

"Did they mention any submarine action?" Robert asked. "Because if Billy didn't have a part of this, God only knows where he was hiding!"

"No, nothing of the kind," Lydia said, right before Josephine jumped to her feet, beaming at Edwin.

"You missed the good part, Ed," she gushed. "When the B-seventeens from Midway flew over the Japanese fleet and unloaded _all over_ them!" Her voice grated with glee, drawing a wince from Lydia that neither Robert nor Elizabeth missed.

"Well, how the hell about _that,"_ Edwin chuckled. "Any hits, did they say?"

"They didn't," Lydia cut back in before Josephine could reply. "Now, Robert Jonathan and Elizabeth Faye, what do you two mean about parking your pork on my cushions in all that filth? Get cleaned up, the pair of you. Josephine, you and I should get a move on with supper before your father gets home. You can peel the potatoes while I brown the beef."

"Yes, Mother," Josephine mumbled grudgingly.

"Edwin, you'll be staying, I take it?" Lydia eyed Edwin expectantly.

"Well, I, ah...." Edwin hemmed and hawed for a moment, but then he caught pleading looks from both Elizabeth and Josephine in the same instant. "I'd be delighted."

"Well, _I'm_ gonna call dibs on the bathroom," Robert asserted. "Wouldn't be surprised if the call boy shows up at one o'clock in the morning. The troop trains just get earlier and longer every day, seems like." He scratched his head and made off to the stairs. Lydia wasn't far behind him, plowing her way out to the kitchen.

Josephine, Elizabeth, and Edwin remained in a loose triangle in the family room, and Josephine's pleading look now shifted to Elizabeth. "Don't be too long, okay? Really want to talk to you about something - both of you."

Elizabeth smiled, warmly. Tempted as she was to hug her little sister, she was much too filthy. "There'll be plenty of time," she promised. "Better go help Ma before she throws a lasso on you. Just don't forget what you want to talk about, whatever that is."

Josephine nodded, but didn't look up. Elizabeth was used to that - for some unfathomable reason, the family's youngest member only looked anyone in the eye when demanded to do so by one of her elders. Edwin, however, even after five years of relation by marriage to the Hachman clan, still wasn't accustomed to some of their quirks.

"Josie, is everything okay?" he probed.

Josephine nodded again, still without a word. Elizabeth touched her husband's shoulder. "Don't worry, Ed. We'll talk. But first I'm going upstairs and change. I can't have a family dinner looking like _this."_

"Yes, _ma'am,"_ Edwin said with a mock salute. And out they went, leaving Josephine resigned to the chore of assisting with dinner preparations.

As he showered, Robert's thoughts trickled in all directions along with the rivulets of water pouring over his head and down his back. _Unreal. We finally socked it to 'em. Maybe this will all be over sooner than we thought. How about Billy? Was he part of it? Will we hear from him again? How's the rest of the_ Hammerjaw _holding up around him?_

_He said they were delayed by engine problems before they sailed. Shitty diesels, they're useless. Still, better for a submarine than a junk locomotive...._

_Wait just a damn minute._

_Hunter. He's all hot under the collar to convert the entire railroad to diesel power. And he's been traipsing back and forth from Mechanicville to East Deerfield all week, the two biggest engine terminals on the division. He wants to see them rotten stinking diesels pulling every train he sends out, and to hell with guys like me who depend on steam to keep our jobs._

_And at the same time, to hell with Billy and every other submariner who doesn't have any other source of power he can afford to fall back on._

_Now just what is that son of a whore trying to pull?_

* * *

The roast, potatoes, and mixed vegetables from the victory garden were well on to a simmer when Elizabeth returned downstairs in a casual taupe dress and house shoes with her hair wrapped in a towel. She tossed her grimy overalls and work shirt into the back of Edwin's car and returned to the house to find Josephine waiting for her, lurking expectantly in the kitchen doorway. Without a sound, Elizabeth motioned with her head toward the stairs. Edwin laid the newspaper on the kitchen table and tagged after them; Lydia was engrossed enough in preparing dinner not to notice.

Robert had seized the opportunity to shave after Elizabeth finished her business. He and William had shared one of the secondary bedrooms growing up; Elizabeth and Josephine had cohabitated in the room across the hall, until the day Elizabeth married Edwin and settled in an apartment in Troy. It was in this latter room that they held counsel. Elizabeth tried to read Josephine as she had for almost twenty years, but sometimes Josephine just couldn't, wouldn't be read. She might be excited and she might be distressed, but the only way to find out which was to let her pour her heart out.

"I....put in with the Office of Civilian Defense," she began in a small voice. "They're looking for sky watchers, people who can tell one airplane from another. You know, just in case the Germans ever send any bombers over us. I just...." She paused and swallowed hard, staring fixedly at the floor. "I haven't told Mom or Dad about it yet, because I just know what they'll say."

Elizabeth's eyebrows rose halfway to her hairline. She wasn't quite sure what to say at first, but Edwin, free of that particular dynamic, relieved her of response. "You know where they're going to post you?" he asked. "I mean, is it easy to get to without a car?"

"It's only a few miles, up on a hill in Eagle Bridge. Beth, can you...." Josephine took a deep, shuddering breath, eyes squeezed shut. "If Mom does make a fuss, can you help me convince her? I really want to do this, but she'll disapprove, I know she will."

"Well, Josie, we all have to do what we all have to do," Edwin said. "I'm off to Europe next week, Billy's likely already in the middle of a huge sea battle. But the war isn't over just because he helped to score a knockout blow."

"It's more complicated than that, Ed," Elizabeth enlightened him. "Mom is....to put it politely, she's very traditional. Doesn't even like the idea of me working, to say nothing of working in the roundhouse. If she finds out Josie is working independently, even if it's important for the war effort, she won't be impressed." She turned to Josephine with a cautionary expression. "But she will find out eventually, you know. This is one of those towns where you're friends with everyone you're not related to, and word gets through the grapevine sooner or later."

"You both know how much I love airplanes," Josephine said dejectedly. "I can tell them apart in less than a second. I could do this. Remember when Amelia Earhart flew across the Atlantic? I wanted to be like her in the worst way, but Mom told me, well, look what happened to Amelia Earhart. She loves to remind me that my math grades are poor and I even had to repeat junior year because of it. Said that if I hadn't wasted all my time reading books about planes and aviation, I never would have had to."

"There, um...." Edwin paused, questioning for a moment whether it was any of his business to bring this up. "There might be an even better chance waiting for you. Rumor has it the Army Air Corps is thinking of recruiting women as ferry pilots - "

"Really?" Josephine's face was like a sunburst.

 _"Strictly_ as ferry pilots," Edwin clarified carefully. "No combat assignments, just flying planes within continental limits or to and from combat zones. Nothing's cast in stone just yet, but the more men go into battle, the fewer we'll have available to ferry aircraft."

"Oh, but that would be _fantastic,"_ Josephine breathed. She paced away, her hands balled into loose fists pounding rhythmically up and down before her, and stared into the blue-and-white sky beyond the window. "Can - do - do you know where I could watch for news?"

"Well, either at the recruiting station, or...." Edwin smiled. "Right where you're headed, at your observation post. There'll always be talk, and if the talk's about aircraft, that's where you can expect to hear it."

"Hordes!" Lydia's voice burst up the stairs from the kitchen. "Your father's home!"

"Oh, my God, I've still got to finish my hair," Elizabeth gasped, grabbing at the towel enveloping her head. "But Josie, don't worry about this, okay? Like Ed says, we've all got to do what we have to, and right now we all have to get some meat and potatoes in our stomachs."

Edwin smiled again as he and Elizabeth turned together to leave. "Or, how does Billy always put it?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical figures in this chapter include Admiral Robert English, ComSubPac, and Captain Charles "Gin" Styer, SubPac Chief of Staff.

_"Down the hatch!"_

Bill Hachman's voice rang down into the conning tower from the _Hammerjaw_ 's bridge. He'd barely finished with morning star sights when the radar watch reported a scattering of contacts, straight ahead, just a hair under fifteen miles distant. By now the _Hammerjaw_ 's search pattern had brought it almost 200 miles west of Midway, but only one fleet in the whole of the Pacific could be returning any lofty contacts from that direction.

"I want you on that radar, Herb," Hachman snapped at Liscomb, who was standing alongside him as officer of the deck. "Count 'em, range 'em, and whatever you do, don't misread 'em."

"Yes, sir," Liscomb said breathlessly as he ducked under the bridge instrument panel. "Should we notify the skipper before we close in?"

"Just get down there and read!" Hachman barked, urging Liscomb toward the hatch. He was positively not in the mood to disturb Stewart's rest, much less have him botch another attack and subject the _Hammerjaw_ to the wrath of an entire flotilla of destroyers.

"How many can you pick out?" Liscomb bent over the radar set alongside Nate Augsberger, perhaps the only radioman on the _Hammerjaw_ who could be counted on to read the scope accurately.

"Only a few," Augsberger said. His finger traced across the jagged, pulsating line on the radar scope, which represented little more than the number of contacts and the range thereto. The SD radar was designed principally to search for aircraft - which at this time of day would be much too close to avoid by the time they came within sight of the lookouts.

"Distance is pretty steady," Augsberger continued. "I guess they could be fighter cover. If they're closing in, they're taking their sweet time."

"Unless it's the tops of capital ships." Liscomb stood up straight and scratched tensely at the back of his neck, then turned to the telephone talker. "Maneuvering, what's the state of the battery charge?"

A tooth-grinding pause lasted several seconds as the talker consulted with his counterpart in the maneuvering room. "About eight hundred amps in the can now," he responded presently. "Looking at a little less than an hour until full charge at this rate."

"Very well." Liscomb nodded, sidled past him and climbed back to the bridge, where the sky had only just begun to turn gray with the dawn. Hachman clutched the bridge rail in one hand and his sextant in the other - both with a death grip.

"Range is still steady, about twenty-six thousand yards," Liscomb reported. "But they're not behaving like aircraft. There's too few of them and they're varying in size. One looks a good bit bigger than the others."

"Have the Japs even got any planes left after the pasting we gave them yesterday?" This from Gale.

"Intelligence reports they've got a handful of light carriers in the Main Body force, along with their battleships," Hachman said.

Liscomb nodded assent. "Could well be we're picking up the superstructures of large ships, high enough to make the radar think they're aircraft."

"Do they _have_ any ships with a superstructure that high?" Gale said with a deep frown.

"Larry," Liscomb said with a wry face, "one of these days we should make you assistant approach officer so you can tell us just how high off the water is every Rising Sun flag you see."

"Sure would give new meaning to 'Rising Sun', wouldn't it?" Gale murmured.

"David and Goliath," Hachman said distantly.

"Sir?" Liscomb eyed him.

"I'll hold down the deck, Herb. Go on down to the shack and notify Pearl we're in contact with the Main Body, bearing two eight zero, range two hundred and fifteen miles from Midway. Believe enemy may be regrouping and forming an advance."

"Aye, aye, sir." Back down the hatch Liscomb went, flushed with purpose, singleminded in his duty.

After dictating the message to the radioman on watch, he almost ran headlong into Stewart, who was quite completely and deliberately blocking his path back to the conning-tower ladder.

"Do you have something you want to report, Mr. Liscomb?" the stonefaced captain said in a monotone.

"We, ah, have multiple radar contacts to the west," Liscomb said, a bit shakily. "Steady range, reporting contact to Pearl now." He nodded sideways into the radio shack for emphasis.

Stewart nodded curtly. "Back to the bridge with you. Tell Commander Hachman to report to my cabin."

"Yes, sir." Liscomb waited until his back was to Stewart before taking a long, slow sigh.

Hachman was a little less nervous as he responded to the command. He was annoyed. He knew just what Stewart wanted with him, and he was not happy that his commanding officer had chosen a moment of enemy contact and decisive action to waste time on such pettiness.

"You sent for me, sir?" he said as he entered Stewart's cabin doorway.

Stewart didn't answer him at once. He held a clipboard in both hands, and by the look in his eyes he seemed like he was trying to pin the clipboard to empy space. Presently he flipped the top page and appraised the one beneath it for a moment. Peering at the top page, Hachman recognized an officer fitness report - probably his own. Then Stewart sniffed, tossed the clipboard back to his desktop and faced Hachman, folding his hands behind his back.

"Curtain," he said crisply, nodding at the doorway behind the executive officer. Once Hachman had drawn the curtain shut, Stewart laid on. "At what point were you planning on informing me that we had made contact with the enemy fleet?"

"We made contact all of six minutes ago, sir." Hachman struggled to keep his tone under control. "Truth be told, we're not even sure what we have - "

"Multiple contacts to the west of us, what the hell else could it be?"

"What I mean, sir, is we don't have a positive I.D. on ships or aircraft. And after the heavy day we had yesterday, I didn't feel it was appropriate to disturb your rest until we had something more definite."

"Poor excuse. I shouldn't have to remind you that I am in command of this boat, that we're in the middle of a major sea action and I am to be informed yesterday if there is any contact whatsoever with enemy forces."

 _You're also supposed to attack those forces aggressively instead of ducking and running_ almost jumped unfiltered out of Hachman's throat, but he bit it down hard and subsituted: "In that case, sir, what are your orders?"

"Maintain constant watch on radar and sonar. If the range decreases significantly, submerge the ship immediately. Also submerge if you pick up any visual contacts. And this time, inform me _at once."_

"Aye, aye, sir," Hachman muttered.

"That's all."

As he pushed the curtain aside and stumped back to the control room, Hachman caught a glimpse of Chief O'Donnell's profile in front of the diving station. O'Donnell glanced obliquely at Hachman but just as quickly averted his gaze. There was nothing to say, and no good could have come of anything that might be said.

* * *

The lights in the submarine force headquarters had been burning all night long. Several yeomen and staff officers had been receiving reports from the Midway defense force and monitoring the airwaves for other transmissions - friendly or otherwise - but the atmosphere in the operations office galvanized when Admiral English entered with the sunlight. Flimsies in hands, two junior staffies rushed over to greet him as he strode purposefully toward his personal office.

"Good morning, Admiral," the senior of the two officers, a slight-figured full lieutenant, greeted him as he proffered his handful of messages. "Two contacts with the enemy west of Midway during the past hour. _Tambor_ sighted many unidentified ships ninety miles out."

"Admiral Spruance is moving to a position north of the island, sir," the junior officer added.

"But that's all?" English frowned. "Just 'many unidentified ships'?"

"That's all Captain Murphy transmitted besides his position." The comment came from Captain Charles Styer, English's chief of staff, standing before the wall chart. "He's ninety miles almost due west."

"We also received a contact report from _Hammerjaw_ just a few minutes ago," the lieutenant went on as he and his colleague fell in beside English, walking toward the chart. "Stated multiple contacts on radar, northwest of Midway at a distance of just under two hundred miles. Her search pattern has her approximately....here." He pointed to a label on the chart marked with the _Hammerjaw_ 's hull number.

Styer offered English a cup of coffee, stonefaced as usual. If he was weary or stressed, he wasn't letting it show. "The _Hammerjaw_ doesn't have surface-search radar," he stated matter-of-factly. "Based on Hypo's information, the only carriers the Japs have left now are the lights operating with the Main Body, so if she's picking up air contacts...."

"Two enemy contacts, almost three hundred miles apart," English mused, studying the positions of the _Hammerjaw_ and _Tambor._ "Fletcher and Spruance routed the carrier striking force yesterday, but the Main Body is still out there somewhere following it in. That must mean Stewart has the Main Body on his scope and Murphy found the invasion force on its way up from Wake."

"And if they're closing on the island...." The stone of Styer's face cracked slightly. "That means Fletcher gave them little more than a poke in the eye. God almighty, Bob, they're still going to try and invade!"

"That's just what I'm afraid of, Gin," English nodded grimly. "Let's not take any chances with intercepts. Get these messages over to fleet headquarters before Admiral Nimitz has a conniption fit." To the senior lieutenant, English continued: "Radio all boats of the defense force. Close in to defensive positions five to ten miles west. Prepare to repel invasion forces. Maintain high submarine alert. Also radio _Plunger, Narwhal,_ and _Trigger_ and have them close in to join the defensive arc."

"Aye, aye, sir," the lieutenant acknowledged, and shambled off to the radio station.

Styer, meanwhile, sent the junior lieutenant on his way with the intercepts. Then he pulled at his coffee and shook his head laconically as he gazed at the chart, the scattered positions of the submarines, the reported position of the American carrier force and the predetermined approach headings of the Japanese surface forces. "Those sons of bitches just don't know when to quit, Bob," he remarked.

"They'll learn," English said confidently. "When they run into a solid wall of submarines and receive a mouthful of magnetically influenced torpedoes, they'll wish it was still last November."

"Well, Rochefort also picked up transmissions from a Jap submarine tender somewhere in the Marshalls." Styer was about to go on, but he paused as he saw the perturbed look on English's face.

"That's damned unsettling," the admiral commented.

"How so?"

"Nimitz is sending out the _Fulton_ to bring back survivors from the _Yorktown._ As much as I'd like to think it's only a coincidence...."

"Both sides sending out submarines and tenders with nearly identical deployment plans?" Styer finished. "Almost seems too coincidental. We only managed to work our plan up because Rochefort broke JN-Twenty-five at the eleventh hour. But they obviously didn't know we were ready for them, or I'd have guessed they broke our codes in turn."

"We can't just forget about it, Gin. We may have caught them flatfooted this time, but if they divine somehow that we broke their codes to do it, this may well be the first and last chance we've had to score such a tremendous victory."

"If that should be the case," Styer said softly, "the future of the entire United States may well depend on Ultra."

* * *

"I'm not likin' the looks of them retaining bolts, Lieutenant," Chief Marcotte shouted in Sandow's ear. "I know we gotta close in with the island as fast as we can, but I sure as hell don't wanna tear a fuel line if one of these bastards works loose." He gestured at the vibrating mountings of the screaming, shuddering diesels in the aft engine room.

"Okay, Chief," Sandow shouted back. "Ride herd on them as hard as you dare. Notify the bridge watch if you have to reduce throttle any." Marcotte acknowledged with a heavy nod of his head. Sandow turned and headed forward, mopping his forehead as the simmering heat of the forward engines squeezed the perspiration from it. Upon reaching the relative quiet of the crew compartment, he breathed a long sigh of relief. Cruising on the surface toward a patrol area was one thing, but charging at high speed to intercept enemy forces, the noise level back there strained the outer limits of human endurance.

He found Hachman in the control room, charting the course from the _Hammerjaw_ 's previous patrol station to the inner arc around Midway. "Chief Marcotte isn't giving us much of a prognosis for numbers three and four main engines," he reported. "If we're going to keep up top speed - "

That was as far as he got before the sudden, loud clank of multiple footsteps thudding on the deck in the conning tower drew both men's attention upward. Then the diving alarm screamed. Almost as loudly, Liscomb's voice rattled the speakers: _"Dive! Dive!"_

Instinctively Sandow whirled toward the diving station as the planesmen spun their control wheels and O'Donnell started yanking on the levers of the ballast pump manifold. The roar of air venting from the ballast tanks as water gushed in to replace it well nigh replaced the roar of the diesels as they shut down, but O'Donnell hadn't waited to close the main induction valve. Sandow clung to the conning-tower ladder as the _Hammerjaw_ 's deck canted down forward, Hachman caught himself on the auxiliary helm and watched the "Christmas tree" panel of indicator lights winking from red to green, by ones and twos, indicating that each hull opening was secured.

Presently Stewart pushed himself through the watertight door from Officers' Country just in time to hear the bridge hatch slamming shut and the dog wheel sealing it against outside pressure, thus switching the last remaining light on the status board.

"Green board!" O'Donnell shouted over his shoulder. "Pressure in the boat!"

"Flood negative!" Sandow responded. "What depth do you want, Captain?"

"One hundred and fifty feet, if you please." Stewart elbowed past him to stand below the conning-tower hatch. "Would you mind telling me what's going on, Mr. Liscomb?"

"Periscope sighted off the port beam," Liscomb answered. "It couldn't be _Grouper,_ she's too far to the north."

Stewart's grasp on the ladder tightened exponentially, and he took a sharp breath as he looked down at the deck. Still can't handle the pressure, Hachman thought derisively to himself as he observed his skipper's reaction. A man who can't handle pressure has no damn business serving in submarines, let alone commanding one.

"Continue the dive," Stewart tensely ordered Sandow. "Make it three hundred feet."

"Three hundred feet, aye," Sandow acknowledged. "Both planes, twenty-degree dive."

"Oh, my - holy Christ almighty!" Brunell's voice, steeped in piety rather than vanity, carried down the hatch from the conning tower. "Control, torpedoes coming in, port side! At least two, maybe three of 'em!"

Hachman jumped back to the chart desk, resisting the urge to shout an order. "Torpedoes, how deep do they - "

Stewart could be heard to mutter an indiscernible curse as he hastily waved Hachman off. "All ahead flank!" he shouted up the hatch as he started up the ladder. "Bearing on those fish?"

"Two nine zero relative," Brunell replied, pressing one earphone hard against his head. "Three of them for sure, sir, can't be more than five hundred yards away now!"

In truth, the high-pitched, whining swish of the approaching torpedoes' propellers could now be heard to penetrate the mild steel hull of the _Hammerjaw._ By now, there wasn't a hair on the boat not standing rigidly on end as those lethal underwater projectiles screeched closer. Louder, closer, more intense. A man could have screamed with panic at the top of his voice and the torpedoes would have drowned out his distress.

But no one would dare scream with panic or any other emotion while submerged, lest they trigger another man's agitation and thus boat-wide pandemonium. No one breathed. Eighty hearts pounded somewhere around the point of fibrillation. The torpedoes screamed closer and closer. How close were they now? A hundred yards? Fifty? How deep? Ten feet? A hundred? How deep had the _Hammerjaw_ gone? Deep enough to avoid them? Could Japanese torpedoes even be set to run deep enough to hit another submerged submarine with a lucky shot? Was one of them about to hit the conning tower? The crew compartment? The forward -

Hachman's teeth clenched almost to jawbreaking point as the first torpedo screeched overhead, pitch dropping with the Doppler effect. The depth gauge was just ticking past 200 feet. That torpedo, and the others, might well be far overhead, but the acoustics of the water made the infernal thing sound only a few feet distant.

"First one missed," he remarked to Sandow, who nodded with a relieved sigh. But what now of the other two?

"Zero bubble," Sandow ordered the planesmen, raising his voice to be heard over the other two torpedo screws. "Blow negative to the mark, bring her down easy." He fought to keep his voice calm - but with the second torpedo now racing somewhere above the afterdeck, it was an effort just to be audible.

"Right full rudder!" Stewart snapped. His gaze scarcely wavered from the overhead: the second torpedo seemed to have a hold on all his senses except taste as it shot over the stern.

"Two misses," he muttered. "Brunell, what about the third?"

"Here it comes now!" Brunell clutched both his earphones as the last torpedo shrieked closer and closer, and louder and louder, and then swished on over the levelled main deck, well over 200 feet above. The collective breath of relief from one torpedo room to the other sounded like it could increase the pressure in the boat further still.

"That Jap sub is still out there somewhere," Stewart determined. "Rig for silent running."

Brunell leaned against the sonar gear as if he was about to faint. Eyes screwed shut, he unerringly turned up the gain on the receiver. Every eye in the conning tower seemed about to roast him. Then suddenly his own eyes popped open and pointed at the sonar dial.

"I think I've got him," he whispered loudly. "Off the port quarter, just outside our baffles."

"How deep, can you tell?" Stewart questioned him.

"No, sir. He's real faint. Screws turning awful slow. Probably listening for us as well."

"All stop," Stewart muttered to the helm.

"Christ, not this again." Sandow made himself audible to no one but Hachman. "I can't keep her depth steady without some goddamned headway!"

"I know it, Bud." Hachman patted his shoulder sympathetically.

"Won't he listen to you if you tell him?"

"Right now he's only listening to one thing - that Jap sub." Hachman tilted his head upward for emphasis.

"Well, at least they can't hit us with torpedoes down this deep."

"Can't they? We don't know how deep they can set their fish to run. All we know is, they hit the _Yorktown_ with only two aerial torpedoes yesterday and it was enough to disable her."

At this, Sandow fell silent. Hachman couldn't be wrong. By now they knew about the limited capabilities of Japanese depth charges, but who had experienced Japanese submarine torpedoes firsthand and lived to tell about it?

"He's passing astern," Brunell whispered. "Hasn't picked up speed....I don't think he's closing."

Sandow's jaw worked like a textile loom as he watched the bubble in the inclinometer slipping forward - without propulsion, the _Hammerjaw_ was taking an undesirable up angle. "Pump from after trim to sea," he muttered toward the trim manifold. "Skipper, she's heavy astern. We've gotta start turning the screws - "

"Nothing doing!" Stewart's petulant whisper scratched its way down the hatch. "Or the next screws we hear will be more of his torpedoes!"

"Should we make the after tubes ready, sir?" Brill inquired from his post at the TDC.

"At three hundred feet? Don't be stupid. He can't hear us, let him hold course away from us and open the range."

Disillusionment wasn't long in coming to replace the tension and worry that had once again saturated the interior of the _Hammerjaw._ The air was saturated enough as it was - the heat from the engines, to say nothing of the stench of diesel fuel, had nowhere to go but forward and aft. It was not at all different from parking a car in a garage, shutting off the engine, and closing the garage door without giving the engine time to cool off. And even if diesel fumes were less of a flash risk than those of gasoline, the temperaments of men under heavy stress were considerably less predictable. Hachman, for his part, felt like climbing up the hatch far enough to break Stewart's legs just for that crass remark about Brill's intelligence. Sandow shook his head in frustration as the bubble crept back to its apex and then slipped backward.

"One of these days...." he murmured.

"One of these days what?" Hachman queried.

"Nothing, sir." Seeing the exec's pointed stare, Sandow looked away and sighed. "One of these days we'll either broach or squash before I can get her back in trim."

"Not now, Bud, not now," Hachman warned him. He tilted his head upward in the hopes of catching a report from Brunell and was rewarded almost immediately.

"He's turning, sir." Brunell's face was colorless. "I don't think he's gonna let go that easy. He's turning and paralleling our course!"

Well, _now_ what?

Hachman spiritedly fought the temptation not to pose that question out loud. Lord knew the submarine school had only ever taught them the basics of making an approach to a surface target - for some reason no one had foreseen a situation like this, a submarine against another submarine, what with the limitations of sonar and torpedo technology. He bounded up the ladder to find Stewart standing below the bridge hatch, staring fixedly at the speed telegraph.

"Sir, I know you don't want to give away our position, but if we don't get underway soon, it's sink or surface," he whispered urgently. "We can't find out his depth, but he probably can't find out ours either."

"And I suppose, then, that you have another suggestion?" Stewart said impatiently.

Admittedly, Hachman was at a loss. In an unfamiliar, unheard-of sort of confrontation like this, no one man could be plied for a resolution. "No, sir. No suggestions. All I know is we can't just hang here."

"Jap sub is closing on the starboard quarter now," Brunell cut in. "Passing us abeam....I don't think he's got his bows to us. He's just trying to feel us out."

Even if the enemy submarine passed well clear of them, how to resolve a standoff such as this? One or the other would have to surface eventually. And whichever one surfaced first would automatically become the target for the other's torpedoes. Two unknown variables: how much battery juice did the enemy submarine have, and how tenacious was its skipper? Was Japanese submarine captain training on par with American? Would he hang on to the death like a giant cephalopod, or was it now coward vs. coward?

But there was one giveaway as to the answer: he _had_ fired on the _Hammerjaw_ when it was surfaced.

The Japanese submarine - the _I-135_ \- hadn't undulated appreciably on its vertical axis, however. Creeping along just above 100 feet, it slid southward, well above the _Hammerjaw_ and only a few hundred yards to starboard. Frustrating though the immobility was to Hachman and Sandow - and the rest of the crew - it had favored them well. The _I-135_ 's sonar operator was at a loss to understand his total lack of contact with the American submarine, once such a quick and easy target, strive as he might to pick up propeller cavitations somewhere nearby.

Meanwhile, within the _Hammerjaw,_ the _I-135_ 's own gurgling, muttering propeller noises were now audible to the unassisted ear. Again, no one breathed and no one moved. Serino clenched his teeth impatiently as he leaned on the railing of the number three main engine, itching to resecure it, but unable to risk giving away the _Hammerjaw_ 's position by banging on metal.

"Passing ahead of us to starboard now, bearing zero eight five," Brunell whispered.

The tension buzzed in the air as Stewart stared at the sonar dial. If the buzz had created a sound wave, the _I-135_ would have had a solid fix on the _Hammerjaw_ that very instant. Minutes crept by like hours: men waited like doomed cattle.

"Rudder amidships," Stewart muttered to the helm. "All back one third."

He caught the harsh, withering glare from Hachman before the exec even knew his face had assumed the look. "Is there a problem, Mr. Hachman?" he said askance.

"No, sir," Hachman replied simply, but he could have hit himself just for the lie. There were plenty of problems and none of them were mentionable.

They had no reason to suspect this trick would even work - no way of knowing if the _Hammerjaw_ was in the _I-135_ 's baffles yet. The two submarines crept in opposite directions, the _I-135_ just deep enough to avoid broaching, the _Hammerjaw_ deep enough to avoid being torpedoed - or torpedoing.

"Still at three hundred feet." Chief Gunderson scowled over his shoulder at the sea pressure gauge in the forward torpedo room as he leaned on the breech of the number one tube: the gauge hadn't budged from 133 psi for almost an hour. "What the hell's going on back there?"

The _I-135_ 's propeller noises had faded from the inside of the hull, leaving Brunell once again the only man on the boat with the answers, if only they were the answers anyone else wanted to hear. "He's on the starboard bow now," he murmured. "Still holding course away from us."

"Right standard rudder," Stewart said quietly. He caught Hachman's protesting look and spoke again, quickly, to keep him from raising a more audible protest. "We have orders to defend Midway from invasion. Don't even think about questioning them. We also have no way of determining how deep that Jap is. Q.E.D., we don't have time to play hide and seek." Turning back for the helm, he watched the gyrocompass rotate slowly until it showed a southeasterly course. "All stop. Rudder amidships. All ahead one-third when she'll take it."

The slight lurch and vibration of the deck plates was perceptible as the _Hammerjaw_ again reversed direction. Granite-faced, Stewart turned to Hachman. "Go below and resume plotting our patrol station, will you?"

"Yes, sir." The flint of Hachman's stare met the granite of Stewart's face with a force that could have ignited what oxygen remained in the air.

* * *

They waited six hours.

Then ten.

Then fifteen.

The radar contacts had long since vanished from the scope: the _I-135_ was nowhere to be seen or heard. The sun arced overhead, passed noon, arced down again. With the coming of the dark, the _Hammerjaw_ surfaced with a few hours' worth of battery juice left - Hachman wasn't happy about the amount of time he'd wasted plotting a patrol station they had never quite reached. But no matter. There wasn't even a rubber life raft anywhere in sight, friendly or enemy.

On his twentieth or thirtieth pace from the cigarette deck to the bridge, Stewart stopped at the gyrocompass and stood there between Elwood and Mitchell Medger, quartermaster of the watch, who already felt himself a bit crowded by Hachman's bulk next to the port rail. Stewart's facial expressions over the past three days had run the gamut from intrepidity to indecision to incompetence to incomprehension. He simply didn't understand what his senses were telling him, because in his mind, it made no sense whatsoever.

"It's inconceivable," he commented to no one in particular. "Battleships, cruisers, light carriers - they outnumber us four to one and they've disabled one of our fleet carriers. Why would they be running for home with their tails between their legs now?"

"Well, sir, does it really matter?" Hachman offered. "By all appearances, they're giving up and getting the hell out of Dodge. Like men used to say when they were holding swords and arrows - the day is ours!"


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical figures in this chapter include Roy S. Benson, executive officer of U.S.S. _Nautilus,_ and Robert E. Dornin, executive officer of U.S.S. _Gudgeon._

Half a world away, even if anyone had heard Bill Hachman's assertion, they would have no doubt rejoiced for a few seconds and then gone straight back to getting about their lives. Edwin Tross had much more future to contemplate, for one thing. He sat on the worn cushions of a Morris chair by the window of his apartment, gazing at the sunset. The last sunset, most likely, that he would see from here, at least for a while. It was Sunday evening, June 7, and his orders were to report to Westover Field the following day for air transport to North Carolina to join the rest of the VIII Bomber Command. Then the next ground he would touch after that would be in southern England, and after that....no, he couldn't afford to think of that now.

He could think of Elizabeth, though, easily. Especially when she came out of the kitchen drying her hands, plainly dressed in a blouse and light blue skirt, a welcome change from greasy overalls and a denim shirt. But Edwin enjoyed the sight of his tall, curly-haired wife regardless of her attire. She threw the hand towel over her shoulder and sashayed over to him, curling herself into his lap.

"So what's on your mind, flyboy?" she asked as she embraced him about the neck.

"You," Edwin murmured. "And only you."

"I'll be okay. My mother is growing a local support group for wives and sweethearts - "

"No, no, I don't mean that. Beth, I...." Edwin sighed. "Whatever's going to happen is going to happen, I'm not worried about that. I just want to make the most of tonight, you know?"

"I know." Elizabeth smiled and kissed him. "Trust me, I know. And we will." She rested her head on his and looked out the window. "Remember the first sunset we watched together?"

"What, up there in Glenville along the river?" Edwin nuzzled at her neck. "That's the one you don't forget. God, that was what, seven years ago already?"

"Just about," Elizabeth sighed wistfully. "How did we get so lucky, Ed? Both of us. The Depression made its hit on everyone, but our families both managed to keep busy, the Army listed you as One-A, and we still were able to pull off a halfway decent wedding. So many lives wrecked, but how have we made it to this point?"

"Well...." Edwin cleared his throat. "If you want to ask me, luck had nothing to do with it. The Dust Bowl shifted half the country's agriculture to this region, and my old man only had a couple of years left before retirement."

"And yet, there he is back behind the throttle because the New York Central is so shorthanded," Elizabeth said wryly.

"At least they didn't shaft him on his seniority." Edwin snugged his arms around Elizabeth and kissed the sensitive spot on her neck. "You know, when we got married, I never said anything about this to you because I didn't want you to worry. But I had no idea where they'd send us. Somewhere in the southwest desert, I thought for damn sure. No one knew which way the world's politics would turn, though, and now I'm off to England carrying a million tons of bombs."

"If only our luck holds...." Elizabeth sighed again.

"Honey, it's more than just luck. War does things to people's lives they never could have seen coming."

"That's just what I'm afraid of, with you flying over Nazi-occupied territory every day."

"At least if we'd been sent out west, we might have been able to stay together a little longer."

"Would we? Or would you have gotten the same orders no matter where we lived?" Again Elizabeth rested her head on Edwin's and rubbed her fingers through his reddish-blond hair, savoring as much of the sensation as she could touch. "I know how you feel, Ed, but....I _am_ worried about what's going to happen before this is all over."

"Come on, Beth, let's not spend the whole night worrying." Edwin kissed her again, this time on the clavicle. "You'll do enough of that while I'm away, I know you will. So come on, we've got better ways to spend our evening. _Any_ evening."

And yet, even as they found vastly better ways to spend this evening, Elizabeth couldn't forget that it just might be the last.

* * *

Kurt was squarely in the middle of pouring hot water over the coffee grounds when the telephone rang at 6:00 the next morning. With Lydia out in the victory garden with a watering can, Josephine still in bed, and Robert working on something carpenterish on the back porch, Kurt caught up to the phone on the fourth ring. Chances were it was work-related for either him or Robert anyway. Sure enough, it was for Robert: a call to duty in Troy for a second section of the Minuteman, due to depart for Boston at 9:00. A rare daytime assignment for a man of Robert's seniority - on the line's premier passenger train, no less - but the burgeoning needs of war transport had unconditional priority over traditional assignments, and service men needed to be hurried to their duty stations with all possible dispatch. Especially with main trains - railroad parlance for the exclusive movement of troops and equipment - holding priority even over flagship passenger service, seniority mattered little with every man and then some working himself to the bone.

"So who's with you?" Kurt inquired after Robert had finished the call.

"Remember Dick Brogan?" Robert said with a chuckle.

"Yeah, didn't he retire in thirty-eight?"

"Yeah, he did, but he's one of those hale and hearty old heads they called back because they're so short of hands, with guys enlisting left and right. Even Ed's dad is back on the job along the Hudson Division."

"And to think I was getting ready to hang up the tools in a couple of years," Kurt said wryly as he poured two cups of coffee and slid one across the kitchen counter.

"I dunno, Pop, I think the war is gonna keep us all busy a damn sight longer than we'd like."

"Well, if you need a lift down to the yard, I'm headed out to Ballston to see Tom Vandervoort and that cranky old pump mechanism of his. Not a one of his workers been able to do a damn thing with it for about two weeks."

"Ah, but if Kurt Hachman can't get it working, it's a total bust," Robert grinned. "That's the talk, isn't it?"

Kurt chortled modestly and took on a sudden, intense focus on scooping sugar into his coffee. "Well, speaking of Ed, you might end up being the last one to see him off. Didn't he have orders to fly out later today?"

"Yeah, I think Westover."

"If you do see him, give him my best wishes, will you? And make sure you tell him not to get himself killed and make an old widow out of my daughter."

Robert laughed. "You got it, Pop." He clapped Kurt genially on the shoulder and headed for the stairs to prepare himself for his day's labors.

* * *

The superheated P-4 passenger locomotive numbered 3713 had won the name "The Constitution" from a schoolboy somewhere in the suburbs of Boston - more likely an aficionado of the 150-year-old sailing frigate berthed in that city than the document for which it was named. Whatever the engine's nomenclature, Robert nodded to himself with approval as he observed its steaming qualities on the pass from the Troy engine terminal to the coach yard. At most, it needed only two scoops of coal every few minutes to keep the fire decently hot and the steam gauge quivering on the 250 figure. Of course, Dick Brogan deserved a good deal of the credit: despite his noted eccentricity, few men knew as much about running a steam locomotive as he did. He'd had mixed feelings about coming out of retirement after almost four years, but like many old heads, he had a grandson who had enlisted on December 8, and he felt a personal responsibility to support that young lad as he best knew how. Robert didn't mind working with him as long as they each let the other do his job in peace, but it was still rather amusing to glance across the cab and see Brogan randomly muttering to himself, probably about the water level.

As they backed down the lead track parallelling the tracks of Troy Union Station, Robert glared out of the gangway at the first section of the Minuteman, waiting to depart from one of the middle tracks in a few minutes. It had a pair of new demonstrator diesels head-out. Robert had heard that some spiffy new high-geared, six-axle model was being introduced for passenger service, but he didn't know their model designation and didn't care. If the war was over sooner than anyone anticipated, those damn diesels, soulless and impersonal and evil-smelling as they were, would surely supplant him and his brother firemen in a hurry: and street scum like Ewan Hunter wouldn't want it any other way.

Privately, Robert wished William was around to give that balding, arrogant little elf what's-for. The railroads could serve their crucial functions perfectly well on steam power, and right now diesel engines were far more urgently needed on submarines and light surface craft - and no one knew it better than William.

They pulled their train out of the coach yard almost at the same moment as the Minuteman's first section departed eastward. Two first-class cars, a dining car, and seven coaches, a slightly smaller consist than usual but well within the Constitution's capabilities. As Brogan carefully inched up to the paved crossing at the north end of the platform, Robert, leaning out of the gangway behind him, searched the bustling mass of humanity between them and the station. No one familiar yet. He dropped to the platform with a can of journal oil and took a moment to double-check the tender's axle journals for proper lubrication - and then there they were, Edwin and Elizabeth, crossing the tracks from the station side by side. Edwin was spotless in his brown service dress uniform, Elizabeth glowing in a light blue button-up dress with a navy sash.

Robert hastened to lubricate the tender journals, put his oil can safely away and make a beeline for the couple. Edwin carried his GI duffel bag on one shoulder and his satchel in his other hand. As he lowered these to the platform, Elizabeth indicated her approaching little brother.

"Well, Bobby!" Edwin greeted him. "Come to haul me off, have you?"

"Afraid so," Robert said with a wry grin. "And to deliver a message from my old man. Said don't bother taking off, he sabotaged your plane."

Edwin balked, open-mouthed - he wasn't sure whether to laugh or not. Elizabeth, however, relieved him of the choice: she was all mirth. "Did he actually _say_ that?" she laughed.

"Nah," Robert confessed. "But he did want to give you his best and tell you not to get yourself killed if you know what's good for you."

At this, Edwin chortled. "You ought to remind him there's a war on."

"Well, me, I do want to say so long and good luck while I'm still somewhat clean." Robert held out his hand for a shake, but as Edwin clasped it, Robert pulled him into a solid brotherly embrace. "Look after yourself now, willya?"

"You bet I will." Edwin clapped him on the back as they parted from the hug.

Robert looked past Elizabeth to see the blue-uniformed conductor ambling down the platform. "Well, looks like it's watch-checking time," he announced. "I'll get you as far as you're going before you change trains, but I better go check the fire first."

"Don't forget to do a pee and get a beer first," Elizabeth called after him. She watched Robert tilt his head high with amusement at the family in-joke as he strode away toward the engine.

Elizabeth then faced Edwin with a sigh and a sad smile. "Well, now I kind of wish Dad _had_ sabotaged your plane so you couldn't take off anywhere."

"I don't think it'd help anyway. We've got this one flight engineer who immigrated from Poland, you give him enough chicken wire and carpenter's glue and he can put together an entire B-seventeen from spare parts." Edwin grasped her shoulders and stepped close. "Don't be worried, Beth. Please?"

"That's like asking a tree not to grow." Elizabeth fought to keep her face straight. "Everything's going to be so empty without you tonight, you know? The apartment, the bed....my whole _life."_

"Well...." Edwin was having a similarly hard time keeping a cork on his emotions. "I'll, uh....I'll try and give you a call tonight from the muster point after we land. Hell, I'm not even sure where we'll be by then."

"Just be on the ground again." Elizabeth swallowed a sob. "Ed, please, just....just stay safe."

"I'll do whatever I have to to get home to you. I love you, Beth." Edwin's eyes screwed shut and he pulled Elizabeth to him, and hugged her, and she hugged him almost as tightly, and then he pulled back just far enough to kiss her, and feel her against him, and hold as much of her as his hands and arms could cling to. He rocked her gently from side to side as she rubbed his shoulders, grasping at fistfuls of his service jacket.

They were both crying by the time they parted.

"If there's been any kind of mistake and you don't end up leaving the country...." Elizabeth choked out. "You know your way back here."

"Hell, I'll walk if I have to." Edwin rubbed at an eye and kissed her again. "I'll be okay, Beth. I promise. I love you."

"I love you, too, Ed. So damn much...." Elizabeth lost all control of her tears as she threw her arms around him, one last time. "Goodbye, darling."

"So long, sweetheart." He rested his forehead on hers for a moment and gulped down his sorrow again. It felt like it took almost an hour for his hands to release her and pick up his gear, so reluctant was he to part from her.

The train announcer's voice echoed indistinctly from the station loudspeakers. The conductor hollered the first boarding call as he walked back up the platform. Elizabeth held Edwin's gaze for one last, lingering, longing moment, until he fulfilled the inevitable and slowly walked around and away from her.

Robert leaned out of the cab gangway and sighed empathetically as he watched Edwin from his own angle. Moving slowly, bags dangling like garbage sacks from his arms, Edwin never disappeared into the crowd. Neither Robert nor Elizabeth took their eyes off him until he presented his ticket and his orders to the trainman and Marine sentry standing beside the train, climbed into the vestibule of the first coach and vanished from view.

Elizabeth turned and eyed her brother. Then she blinked away tears, looked back toward Edwin and made a gesture with her head. _Keep him safe as long as you have him._ Robert nodded in understanding and withdrew back into the cab, cracking the firebox door.

The fire was decently lit, so he returned to the gangway and peered at the dwarf signal just in front of them: it glowed steadily yellow, restricting the speed at which they could move out of the station until they hit the main line. The first section wouldn't be far ahead, but they would no doubt be meeting one westbound freight extra or troop movement after another before they even hit North Adams. So many extras, so much war traffic, so many meets and only so much trackage to make them on. The guy running the Fitchburg Division chief dispatcher's desk had better be even closer on his game than the train crews.

Robert forced himself to stop thinking about Edwin and Elizabeth's unwilling parting and busied himself tossing a few light scoops of coal into the back end of the firebox, where the mechanical stoker couldn't reach. Edwin, though, had lucked out finding a seat on the south side of the train. Elizabeth stood on the platform, upright, but her feet trembled as she tried to keep her composure. Then the conductor waved off the highball, Brogan sounded the whistle, switched on the bell and tugged at the throttle, and Edwin leaned halfway out of his window, blowing one last kiss to Elizabeth as his coach lumbered past her and she mouthed one last "I love you" to him. The steam blasting from the Constitution's cylinder cocks was like a loud, solicitous sigh: the engine's own soul seemed to shake at the task of bearing all these young men away to whatever awaited them on distant shores.

Robert hastened to hurl several larger scoops of coal into the firebox to raise the temperature along the side sheets and build a decent head of steam. Then he turned his attention to the stoker manifold as he sat on the fireman's cushions and joined Brogan in watching the track ahead as they accelerated through town. Out of the suburbs, along the east bank of the Hudson and across the farmlands, Brogan held his ubiquitous posture of leaning slightly forward with his feet tucked under him and his hand resting near the brake valves. He moved only to adjust the valve stroke to control his speed and steam usage. Fine adjustment was the name of their game, on which they both played on the same team, as Brogan fiddled with the valve stroke and Robert the stoker manifold. Any place he didn't have to watch the tracks on a left curve, he would take advantage of the opportunity to satiate the fire's bottomless appetite with moderate scoops of coal, concentrating on the side sheets and backhead to maximize the heat transfer. At first the steam gauge quivered toward the 260 figure - threatening to pop the safety valve - but the constant uphill climb from the Hudson Valley toward Eagle Bridge gobbled up as much steam as Robert's energy could gestate.

"High yellow!" Brogan called out to Robert as they crossed under the truss bridge supporting Route 67. Ahead, at the junction of the passenger and freight main lines in Johnsonville, the top light on the three-head signal glowed dull yellow, warning them to be ready to stop at the next interlocking. Robert hurried back to his side of the cab to reduce the stoker feed and start his injector to lessen the boiler pressure for the reduction in speed. As he leaned out of his window, he thought he spied Hunter's broad beam on the top floor of the interlocking tower. He scowled so angrily at the silhouette that he almost overcompensated backing off the pressure on the stoker. If that _was_ Hunter, few were the reasons his exalted presence would be vicariously making a mess of the interlocking.

The reason for the approach signal was visible in minutes. The first section of the Minuteman had lost one of its engines shortly after clearing Johnsonville, and a steam helper, another Pacific, was on its way up the controlled siding to the rescue. Robert held his breath as he watched the signal at the next interlocking - which, sure as sugar, turned green shortly after the helper had crossed onto the eastbound main in front of the disabled train.

"High green!" Brogan exclaimed, and began to widen out the throttle again.

 _"Ha!"_ Robert cackled, clapping his hands. "He's runnin' us ahead of 'em! So much for Hunter's precious stink!"

"They'll lose a good half hour at North Adams tacking on the electrics," Brogan said without overjoy. "Probably be almost two hours behind the eightball by the time they hit Greenfield."

"I can only imagine what his delay report's gonna look like," Robert grinned sardonically as he got up to stoke the fire. "Thought I saw Hunter back at the tower, he's gotta be havin' a fuckin' stroke right about now. God forbid one of his precious diseasels should shit the bed."

He kept laughing callously as he passed another two dozen pounds of coal from the tender to the firebox. If railroad diesels continued to prove their unreliability, maybe he had a chance of hanging onto his job after all in spite of Hunter. But then the question came back to him.... _was Hunter up to no good while the rest of the world was at war?_

* * *

Destroyers and patrol craft burbled about the entrance to the Midway fleet anchorage. Almost two hours passed between the sighting of land and the _Hammerjaw_ 's bow poking past the breakwaters on the east side of the island. That was a far dip, however, below the nearly 36 hours since there had been any updates on the Japanese fleet. Air searches and random radar contacts had been scanty, but they all, including the _Hammerjaw_ 's, painted the same picture: the Japanese had turned on their heel and run for home. A late-arriving, lurking Japanese submarine had given the coup de grace to the _Yorktown,_ but even suffering such a setback, the Battle of Midway had ended in overwhelming victory for the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Triumph or no triumph, the _Hammerjaw_ 's lookouts remained vigilant as the newly battle-hardened submarine approached the tender, but Bill Hachman and Doug Stewart leaned on opposite sides of the bridge, their edges turned much more sharply to each other than to any distant nautical activity.

Five submarines had returned thus far and nestled alongside the tender. Hachman stood up straight as he fixed on one of them, a behemoth compared to its nestmates, extending some sixty feet beyond any of them and mounting two gargantuan six-inch deck guns.

Hachman blinked. No, that couldn't be the _Nautilus._ Could it? If it had experienced anything like the ass-kicking the _Hammerjaw_ had received, how could it even have surfaced, much less docked?

He found out several hours later when he reached the officers' mess on the tender. Several of his fellow execs had attended to their boats' maintenance requirements and congregated here: when Hachman entered, no one short of Roy Benson, the executive officer of the _Nautilus,_ was holding forth.

"Howdy, Hammer," Benson greeted him. "Go on and pull up a chair, willya? Get your war stories ready if you got 'em."

"If you still got a boat, that is." This from James Cobbert, a class behind Hachman at the Naval Academy, appointed executive officer of the _Daggerfish_ a couple of months prior.

 _"Hammerjaw_ 's still with us," Hachman said perfunctorily, not bothering with any reassuring tones. "Surprised to find you are, too, Roy. Thought we could hear the Japs working you over right before the dive bombers hit, I thought you were goners for sure."

"Think a few of us felt the same way," Benson admitted. "But here's what happened next, and this here's no bullshit, guys. Brockman's got only one thing on his mind - take a shot and nail the biggest Jap ship he can lay eyes on. So he puts up the periscope a few hours later, and there's a great big flattop on fire about three thousand yards ahead. Bombers hit her and she's dead in the water. So Brockman brings us in, nice and careful, hammers out a solution - sorry, Hammer, nothing personal - and lets go all the fish we've got up forward."

"At three thousand yards?" Cobbert's big, square face twisted with incredulity. "Musta been the longest two and a half minutes you ever passed."

"You know it, buddy," Benson said with a grin. "But what do you think happens in those two and a half minutes? The whole side of the carrier lights up on fire, crew just about falls overboard, and she blows her insides clean out!"

Many murmurs of "Hot damn!" and other expressions of appreciation buzzed about the mess room. But Hachman couldn't force himself to join in the jubilation.

"I reckon the escorts weren't too happy," Charlie Tamworth of the _Oilfish_ remarked from behind Benson.

"Oh, they weren't, but I guess they had more important things to do than hold us down, because here we are," Benson said loftily.

Hachman slouched in his chair, arms folded, gazing at the deck under Benson. What rotten luck of the draw. A few days ago, he would have bet his next pay grade that the _Nautilus_ would never survive such a spectacular, fierce battle at its age. But it obviously had, and it had accomplished what the _Hammerjaw_ hadn't - picked off an enemy carrier. Damaged and dead in the water thanks to the dive bombers fair enough, but still, a carrier. All because Bill Brockman, only a year junior to Stewart, had the courage and determination to overcome his boat's shortcomings, carry out his duty and attack the enemy, despite the risks. And Doug Stewart was too overcautious to even attempt it with a brand-new, state-of-the-art fleet boat. Those escorts had had more important things to do, all right, like swarm and pound the _Hammerjaw_ with impunity.

Now more clearly than ever, Hachman understood the theory that the boat and the skipper were as a single entity, that the boat happened to be manned by eighty-odd strange outsiders doing the entity's bidding. The boat as a whole was only as effective as the man commanding it. The Bill Brockmans of this man's Navy would push the action beyond all foreseeable limits; the Doug Stewarts, if allowed to remain where they were, would merely find new limits to avoid pushing.

Lost in these thoughts, Hachman didn't even hear anyone calling his name until Benson leaned into his line of vision. He shook himself and looked up - all eyes were now on him.

"You weren't that far away from us," Benson reminded him. "Close enough to hear the shellacking we were getting, the way you tell it. What'd you run into?"

"A Jap sub," Hachman replied tersely. Suddenly all focus zeroed in on him. "James, you and I went to sub school together. You remember any lessons in taking on another sub underwater?"

"Aw, hell," Cobbert grunted. "All they could talk about was attack trigonometry and how to screw around with the Is-Was and 'do it this way 'cause this is the way we've always done it.' Who the hell ever thought about trying to guess another sub's depth?"

"Well, we had to, and we couldn't. This son of a bitch shot three torpedoes at us, so we had to go deep. And we _stayed_ deep. Bastard must have passed us a hundred yards abeam and we had no way of telling how far up he was."

"What do you think, fellas?" The iron stare of Robert Dornin, off the _Gudgeon,_ swept about the assemblage. "Are we looking forward to more square-offs with enemy subs?"

"Well, Dusty, if _you_ can't score a hit, that bodes pretty damned lousy for the rest of us," Hachman said.

"Just would be a hell of a thing if the powers that be were a little more imaginative about submarine versus submarine engagements, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah," Cobbert scoffed, tossing up his hands in annoyance. "Too bad they're all so busy bickering over whether or not the torpedoes work." He pulled at his coffee cup and then lowered it, immediately noticing the silence he'd gotten in response. Seconds ago, all attention had been pinned on Hachman's tale of a submerged confrontation. Now a half-dozen critical stares turned on Cobbert and his frowning, bare-toothed face.

"What?" he growled.

"Got anything else you want to talk about?" Dornin said. "Because this ain't a good spot to talk torpedoes unless you want to be surfaced and left on the beach."

The staring contest that ensued was like flint meeting steel: both Cobbert and Dornin were possessed of such metallic glares that no one could conceive of a need for torpedoes to puncture enemy ship hulls when they could seemingly do it with their naked eyes. It was Hachman who wryly voiced this, drawing a few uncomfortable chuckles from the other execs.

"Well," Cobbert said, thumping the tabletop, "I don't like the idea of going up against another sub not knowing if I can get a solid hit. Sounds to me like a job for a fella who knows his way around a TDC." He glanced obliquely at Dornin, who remained unamused.

Opportunely, the door banged open, and in came Herman Ackmore of the _Grouper,_ headed straight for the coffee urn. Benson, as before, was first to greet him. He was considerably less enthusiastic, however, than his compatriots who had gathered to trade sea stories. In fact, he presented the appearance of a man so overtired and worn out that he could drain the entire coffee urn and still collapse across the nearest tabletop.

"Well, you look like death warmed over, Herman," Hachman observed.

"How d'you think you'd look if you came within feet of getting squashed?" Ackmore grumbled.

"How's that again?"

"We lost depth control avoiding an air attack. Depth gauge hit the peg long before we pulled out of it, but the forward torpedo room reported two hundred and seventy PSI out there. Do the math."

No one needed to - 270 PSI was a known figure, the outside sea pressure just below 600 feet. Twice the test depth of any fleet submarine currently in service, tempting the fates to reduce the boat to wire fragments in a fraction of a second. Suddenly Benson's exciting tale of polishing off a damaged enemy carrier had lost all its magnificence.

"I dunno, fellas," Tamworth remarked. "It says something to me that we've all made it back from this so far without leaving any grieving widows stateside."

"Yeah, it says we've got too many skippers who are too anxious to avoid a fight," Ackmore growled.

"Ah, Christ," Benson muttered. "Let's not start this and say we did - "

"Nah, Roy, he's talking," Hachman interrupted with raised finger. "Let the man talk."

"We had a chance to take a crack at a couple of tin cans and damaged flattops," Ackmore went on. "Took us forever to close the range, and all we got for our trouble was more than a hundred depth charges. The whole of that day, I think we came up to periscope depth once for a fix on those carriers. Hell, just yesterday, ComSubPac sent us on a wild goose chase trying to find the Jap sub that nailed the _Yorktown._ You think we even bothered trying to surface?"

"Well, you weren't the only one to rub hulls with a Jap sub." Hachman looked over at Dornin as if to answer the question he'd posed earlier. "Don't think for one minute that this is gonna be the last time."

"Oh, I'll be looking for a transfer long before it happens again," Ackmore asserted. He sat down heavily across from Hachman and slopped a tablespoon or two of coffee out of his cup in the process. "This hiding way down deep when there's a couple dozen fat targets getting by on the surface - "

Before anyone could shush him, the door swung wide again. It was an enlisted man this time, dressed in clean dungarees, clutching his white hat in his hands, almost apologetically. He paged Hachman, who waved in response.

"Your Chief of the Boat is down in the machine shop, sir," the sailor said. "Says he's having some materiél trouble and asks if you can come help straighten it out."

"All right, I'll be down in a minute." Hachman stood up with one hand spread in resignation. "Well, boys, as we know too well, the exec's work is never done no matter what boat he goes to. Catch up with you on the beach tonight." And out he went, not caring a gauge glass for whatever was being said behind his back after he'd left.

When he reached the tender's machine shop, he spotted Chief Serino quickly - dressed in much dirtier dungarees, pacing about with his fists on his hips. He was near a lathe, where one of the tender's machinists was poring over a heavy bolt with jagged ends.

"I finally get 'em to grind us out a new bolt, and it's broken," Serino groused, gesticulating at the lathe. "Three weeks. Twenty-one days since we left Mare Island with brand-new engines and we're already havin' trouble getting the hardware."

"Well, your chief motormac told me he had a couple of damaged piston crossheads in your number three main engine as well," the machinist said. "At least those aren't too hard to replace, but thank God you don't have H.O.R. engines or you'd be up the creek without a paddle."

"You don't have to tell us, sailor," Hachman said. "We _did_ have H.O.R.s, for all of five months. Hell of a lot easier to replace a crosshead than it is to lose one. You lose a crosshead on a steam tractor or a locomotive, and you're not gonna be turning a wheel."

"Mr. Hachman, with all due respect, the _Hammerjaw_ is a submarine, not a train," Serino said in a tone that suggested Hachman had just completed his first rowing practice in Chesapeake Bay.

"And that being the case, she's got to have top-end machinery to keep her going. Sailor, were all the bolts you have on hand cast from the same batch of steel?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Commander," the machinist said guardedly.

"Well, a requisition order's like to take the rest of the war to fulfill. All right, Chief, I'll hash this out with the squadron supply officer. A boxing title can work miracles in a situation like this. Tell you what, why don't you go ashore with Marcotte and dig through some of the trash. The Japs hit Midway hard enough last Thursday, they're bound to have left no shortage of scrap metal behind."

"Will do, sir," Serino acknowledged. "Wouldn't hurt my feelings, though, if we gotta head back to the States and take care of a few other things on the boat that need replacing."

Hachman caught his knowing look and immediately recognized the forbidden subject the Chief of the Boat was skirting around. Deftly he steered the discussion back to the business at hand: "We head back to the States with a no-good engine and they're liable to rip it out and stick another Man Whore in there in place of it. You think I'm gonna let that happen, there's a bridge in Brooklyn I wanna show you. Report to me after quarters tomorrow morning."

"Yes, sir," Serino grunted as he turned his attention back to the lathe.

It wasn't often that Hachman caught himself using a crude appellation like "Man Whore," but there was nothing more appropriate to say about the Hooven-Owens-Rentschler submarine diesel engine. He'd have liked to see the _Hammerjaw_ 's original power plant deep-sixed instead of scrapped and recycled, but if they could find other uses for the scrap....

As he went in search of the squadron supply officer, he paused briefly in his tracks, his mind turning over the chronic H.O.R. engine problems. Today he'd learned that even the tender crews knew about them and had nothing polite to say. Most submariners referred to them simply as "Whores," but Marcotte had been among the first to assign "Man Whore" to them, referring to H.O.R.'s parent corporation, Maschinenfabrik-Augsberg-Nürnberg. You wouldn't hear a more German name south of the Rhine. Suddenly Hachman found himself contemplating a possible connection.

At first, he tried to dismiss it. Kurt's parents had immigrated from the Wilhelmshaven area along the German coast in the mid-1870s. Kurt had served meritoriously in the Navy at the turn of the century, which was the only thing that had spared him and his family from death threats, vandalism, and violence during the first war. William, however, had had to learn the hard way to defend himself in the schoolyard and elsewhere. Even to this day, he would unthinkingly punch the lights out of any punk who questioned his allegiance simply because of his German ancestry. Lydia was Dutch, for God's sake. Had every man Jack forgotten the Dutch fleet getting its ass handed to it by Axis forces in the East Indies before the beginning of the year?

But then again, during the first war, no one with such ambitions as Adolf Hitler's had been ruling Germany. That man was as dangerous as he was unhinged. He'd hoarded so much power during the last nine years that there was no telling what kinds of executive orders he had secretly issued - including orders to plant spies and saboteurs on Allied soil.

Hachman desperately didn't want to believe it of any engine manufacturer of German origin, with that country's unassailable reputation for mechanical aptitude. But was there any chance at all that H.O.R. could be riddled?

He'd had to learn to defend himself the hard way - swing harder than the other guy, always connect solidly, and never miss. If any more H.O.R. engines should be inflicted on the submarine force because of a shortage of General Motors or Fairbanks-Morse products, and submarines started losing their functionality in enemy waters, they would have to start learning even harder, newer, and faster lessons in self-defense to get out of there alive.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicating this part to my awesomely supportive and talented friend Kit, who will recognize my token of gratitude when she gets to it. :D Check out her fab art work (and commissions) at [Nycteris Art.](https://avoyagetoarcturus.tumblr.com)

One man who could never in his lifetime face an accusation of disloyalty to his nation stood a midafternoon watch over it from a fire tower above Eagle Bridge. Since the outbreak of hostilities, the four-level tower now served a dual purpose - keep an eye out for forest fires, and watch for enemy aircraft. The Civil Defense band the observer wore around his left arm indicated that the latter duty was his. A U.S. Forest Service ranger occupied the enclosed top level of the tower with him to serve the former duty, and they both kept an ear on the two-way radio set, which mostly remained silent but for identification calls from the nearby radar station in North Petersburg. The FM radio broke the monotony with a bit of Glenn Miller here and George Gershwin there.

At length, a new monotony-breaker caught their attention: a young woman, almost still a girl, riding a blue-and-white bicycle up the path from the road. The Civil Defense observer looked at the time and requested the ranger to keep the air watch for him for a minute before he trotted down the steps to ground level.

"Hello there, young miss," he greeted the girl cordially as she rested her bicycle against one of the tower pillars. "You must be Josephine."

"That's me," she beamed. "Josephine Hachman."

"Joe Kariwase." He extended his hand for a grasp.

"That's a funny kind of name," Josephine observed before she even knew what she was saying.

Kariwase was taken aback for a moment, but then he smiled back, gently. "In the Mohawk tongue, it means 'a new way of doing things.' Something my people have had to learn all over again since this dastardly war started."

Josephine's eyes slammed shut. Her head tilted quickly downward, as if slapped by the hand of her own embarrassment. "I'm....I'm so sorry, I didn't want to offend you, I'm just....I'm sorry, I'm - I'm new to this and excited and - "

"It's okay." Kariwase clasped her arm reassuringly. "Forget about it and let's get to work. You like to be called Josephine, or something else?"

"I like Josie. We've got almost the same first name, don't we?"

"Well, if you like, you can call me by my native name, Running Bear. Might help to alleviate any confusion between us."

"You're sure you wouldn't mind?"

"Honestly, I'd prefer it." Kariwase smiled, this time genially. "Come on up and I'll show you the post."

Josephine eagerly bounded up the three flights of stairs behind him, despite his own easy, deliberate pace, knowing the top level of the tower wasn't going anywhere. "We've been guarding this land for many thousands of years," he said reflectively. "Ever since the early days of the Iroquois League, it's been up to us to defend its eastern boundary. And some things never change. But I don't think it ever occurred to a one of us that it'd fall to us to watch the skies as well as the land. Seems like wherever there's men, some of them will always be fighting each other. So, here we are."

Josephine wasn't sure what to say, so she stuck to Kariwase's heels as they reached the top platform of the tower and entered the inner sanctum, where Kariwase introduced her to the ranger and showed her the vital appointments of the sky watch. He honestly couldn't tell if she was listening - she didn't look at him or speak a word, but seemed highly motivated to start watching the sky right away, even with her naked eyes. Finally he opted for a small test of her attentiveness: "So tell me, Josie, what is it about this duty that interests you?"

"Airplanes," she replied without missing a breath or looking at him. "I'm crazy about them."

"Little unusual for a _yakon kwe_ to be interested in something like that, isn't it?"

"A what?"

"A young woman like you."

"They just....they fascinate me," Josephine shrugged. "Have done, ever since Amelia Earhart flew all the way to England when I was five years old. And yes, I know what happened to her eventually. But man has been flying airplanes for forty years and created so many different kinds, I can't get enough! Just _wait_ until a bombing squadron like my brother-in-law's flies over us and let me point out every kind of plane in it - "

"We aren't playing a game, Josie," Kariwase interrupted her sternly. Seeing her slightly hurt look, he softened his tone and continued: "Don't make that for a mistake. You can't be losing yourself in a round of 'I Spy' when the bombbays suddenly open up and unload."

"I'd know if they were going to or not," Josephine asserted. "When that flight of medium bombers passes by in a minute, I'll be able to tell you what kind they are as soon as they get a little closer."

"When...." Startled, Kariwase hesitated. "When they - how did you know they were coming? We only just heard about them from the radar station a few minutes before you got here."

"I could hear them," Josephine said simply.

"I don't hear nothin'," the ranger shrugged in response to Kariwase's glance.

"Just keep your eyes to the southwest." Josephine gestured behind her, but her hands didn't stop moving for an instant, waving, clasping, spreading before her, as before any of them knew it she plunged on about several different types of aviation engines. She described different engine noises as if they were the sounds of musical instruments - pitch, vibrato, timbre, aspiration, and even the fact that you could tell a heavy bomber from a medium one by its pitch and RPMs. The ranger shook his head in disdain and tuned her out after a minute, but Kariwase stayed standing before her, his arms folded contemplatively, wondering why the Office of Civilian Defense hadn't posted her sooner.

"And if you didn't know the different sound of the RPMs," Josephine concluded, "you couldn't tell if it was a B-twenty-five or a Lockheed Hudson." She turned and picked up a pair of binoculars from the top of a cabinet before the open window. "Should be seeing them in a few seconds. I'd say B-twenty-fives, they've got a lower pitch."

Slowly Kariwase moved up beside her and drew another pair of binoculars from inside the cabinet. He could hear the humming engines now, too, reverberating over the hills. He searched the sky several degrees before, to his total disbelief, a flock of half a dozen B-25s - exactly what the radar station had alerted him to - appeared from behind a ridge to the west. They were a mile or so south of the tower, winging their way from their manufacturing plant in Columbus to the Army Air Corps base in Manchester, New Hampshire.

"Those are the same kind of planes that bombed Tokyo in April, you know," Josephine commented.

Kariwase lowered his binoculars and shook his head in amazement. "Well, girl, you've shown me a new way of doing things all right. I don't know who schooled you in aircraft recognition, but it ought to be you schooling them," he remarked. "In fact, you should be schooling every aspiring sky observer who comes forward from now on. But the most important question is, would you know what a Junkers Fifty-two sounded like if it got too close?"

"Yeah." Josephine smiled under her binoculars, which she still hadn't lowered. "Nothing like any of ours."

Still staring at her with cynicism approaching contempt, the ranger arose from his chair and crossed toward the western windows of the tower. "I reckon next she'll be schoolin' us how to tell railroad engines apart just from the sound of 'em," he mumbled to Kariwase under his breath.

"No, I'll leave that to my brother," Josephine responded, much to the ranger's surprise. "He works around them." Engrossed in watching the B-25s' eastward passage, she didn't see the ranger rushing out to the catwalk on the side of the tower to cover up his embarrassment.

"You'll do well, Josie," Kariwase said approvingly. "You'll do very well. As a matter of fact, you may as well come by again after school tomorrow and I'll have someone from the regional office up here to meet you. Maybe even catch another bomber squadron passing by."

The B-25s vanished behind a cloud: it was only then that Josephine lowered her binoculars and turned to face him. "You bet, Running Bear," she beamed. "I can't wait."

* * *

Josephine's unusually wide, underbitten grin scarcely faded over most of the next two days. At nineteen, she was even slimmer than Elizabeth, yet somehow the towering-height gene had passed her up: she stood five or six inches shorter than any of her siblings, and her shoulder-length hair was thick, dark, and curled about her temples. To look at her and Robert side by side, there was little doubt that they were related, with her wide dark eyes and her grin like a Hollywood star's front gate. The rest of the family was used to her quietude - ever since she was a little girl, she had some days when she wouldn't breathe a word, other days when she seemed physically unable to stop talking about something that sparked her interest, both to Lydia's chagrin. The latter sort had become more common since Amelia Earhart's transatlantic flight, the usual subject being aviation.

Elizabeth knew the grin. She could have seen it from the road adjacent to the fire tower when she arrived the next day even if she'd done so in total darkness. Skipping with joy, Josephine approached the car with a small bundle under her arm, which she didn't release long after she'd jumped into the front seat.

"Well, you look excited as all get-out," Elizabeth observed.

"I'm _official_ as all get-out!" Proudly, Josephine displayed the Civil Defense armband showing at the edge of the bundle - which Elizabeth now recognized as the uniform of a sky observer.

"Oh, my God, that's fantastic, little sis!" she exulted, clapping her hands. "Such congratulations! I'd give you a big hug, but...."

"But Ma will kill you if you don't change first," Josephine finished, noting Elizabeth's grimy work clothes.

"Well, speaking to that...." Elizabeth spoke somewhat gravely as she turned the car around and headed back down toward Route 67. "I'm thinking you'll have to let Ma in on this sooner than later. Won't take her long to get suspicious if you keep coming home late from school over a few days."

"Two more weeks and I won't be _in_ school anymore. The guy I'm working with at the tower? He's a Mohawk Indian. So I was thinking, if we tell Ma that he's been teaching me how to hunt and fish - "

Elizabeth laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, Josie, I'm sorry, I really am. But you couldn't lie your way out of a wet paper bag, you know. Ma would never buy a story like that, certainly not for two whole weeks."

"What could I tell her, then?"

"Why not just tell her the truth?"

"Because I couldn't stand the lecture she'd give me about getting my priorities straight. Finish school, meet a man, get married, and hurry up and give her grandchildren." Fairly blurting her words now, Josephine rolled her eyes. "I mean, that's what you do during normal life, not twelve years of depression and war."

Elizabeth nodded consideringly. "You're absolutely right."

"So how do you put up with it?"

"I haven't really had to since....since Ed and I got married." Elizabeth had to fight to keep a lid on her heartache from parting company with Edwin, to keep it from distracting her driving. "You're....well, you're different from me, Josie. Really, you're different from all of us. You've never been too interested in finding a man and having a family. If anyone, you're a lot more like Bobby in that way. All that matters to you is cutting your own path through life because there's nothing you want more than to live the life you want for yourself."

"Yeah, but Mom and Dad don't jump down Bobby's throat every time he turns around because all he wants to do is work," Josephine grumbled.

Elizabeth glanced down and noticed that Josephine's hands were restlessly kneading at her bundled uniform, definitely a sign that she was getting worked up. "Well, you've come far enough to get a hold of that. I promised you I'd help if Ma makes a fuss, and I will. She's going to find out, though, if you don't tell her. The social group she's starting for wives and sweethearts is going to be a regular gossip factory." She steered the car onto the rural farm road cutting across Martin Van Der Beel's property in the east of Johnsonville.

"But what about before you and Ed got married?" Josephine abruptly returned to the prior subject without segue, something she did often. "How did you deal with Mom and Dad getting on your case?"

"Like I said, you're different," Elizabeth said. "Come to think of it, maybe that's _why_ they've gotten on your case the way they have, because you've been you and not me. But everybody was trying to make something from nothing back then, and I think even they recognized that the important thing was to stay alive."

"But it's just as important today. It's a different challenge, but if that's still the goal....I've got to help everyone stay alive the best way I know how. Doesn't that make sense to you?"

"Sure it does, but I'm not the one we have to convince, am I?"

"I don't know what I'm going to tell her, Beth." Josephine's eyelids were squeezed as tightly as her hands around the bundle, in a state of near panic. "If I _have_ to tell her....then _what?!"_

"Well, you'd better calm down before you try to tell her anything, or you won't get anywhere," Elizabeth said firmly. "Why don't you leave that with me and go do some cartwheels in the back field? Running and jumping and cavorting around always makes you feel better."

Josephine sighed, but she didn't answer. Elizabeth, however, didn't press her for one, nor did she have to ask to know that Josephine was silently contemplating her advice and preparing herself for the forthcoming challenge. Josephine _was_ different, seemingly determined to break with the traditions Lydia had taken pains to teach her, and she had suffered enough for it, in all senses imaginable: now that she was reaching an age where she could decide for herself how to live her life, Elizabeth knew full well she would need extra strength to cut the proverbial apron strings with their mother.

Another couple of turns and they had reached the driveway of the family home, but it was empty - no sign of life around the house.

"Mom's not home," Josephine observed with some disconcert.

"Well, then it's your golden opportunity. Both to hide that uniform somewhere and think about what you want to say to her. Because you _will_ have to tell her, Josie, there's no avoiding it. But just remember, at this point in your life, what matters is that it's _your_ life and not the one she wants for you. Certainly not at a time like this when none of us knows where we'll be in a year or two."

"Okay. I'll try." Josephine hadn't looked at her since they'd hit Route 67, but now she glanced quickly at Elizabeth, her look pensive. "Could I....is there any way I could come stay with you for tonight?"

"Well, we don't want Ma hitting the ceiling if you're not home at all. But tell you what, call me if you have to, okay?"

"Okay." Josephine smiled gratefully and clambered out of the car, tucking her uniform under her arm as she hastened to the front door.

* * *

Few things were simpler to quantify than Robert's joy at seeing an S-1 numbered 3002 waiting for him on the ready track at Boston Engine Terminal. Not just an S-1, but one obviously fresh from overhaul and reactivation at the main shop in North Billerica, twenty miles up the line. The traffic levels were such that the motive power department had to curtail its retirement of those hefty, hard-pulling freight engines, and to see one of the oldest S-1s back in action told Robert that the diesel failure at the beginning of the week had proved to be precipitous.

The day's journey ended at East Deerfield, only a little over half the distance back home. The next day brought a local turn to and from Holyoke - with both manpower and steam power taxed to the limit, the brotherhoods didn't give much of a damn about guys working in different seniority districts as long as they were qualified and not wasting time. Then the next day, another long haul to Boston; and finally, three days after seeing Edwin off, a return trip to Troy on a passenger extra. An R-1 class Mountain, numbered 4118 and named "Black Diamond" by none other than Josephine herself, would lead the train, along with Robert and his fortyish engineer, Fred Magnussen, back to their home territory at last.

Josephine's win in the naming contest had been easy after Robert enlightened her that "Black Diamond" was a slang term for coal. But he couldn't care less about the power as long as it was steam - he knew he couldn't bear to sit still on a diesel locomotive for hours, doing absolutely nothing. The fifteen-mile climb on the huge ruling grade from East Fitchburg to Gardner reminded him that physical labor was his element, constantly twisting back and forth, grabbing a scoop of coal, stomping on the foot pedal to open the firebox doors, tossing his burden into the raging blaze inside the box, letting the doors clank shut as he twisted back for another scoop, toss after toss after toss. In less than a year his coordination and concentration had improved vastly, to say nothing of hitting all the spots necessary to slake the fire's hunger. It had taken him a couple of months to get the hang of keeping the fire covered by both stoker and hand, but not many other firemen on the Fitchburg Division strove for the same excellence as he did.

Kurt and William had both taught him years ago that if you were making smoke, no matter what kind of engine you had, you were just wasting fuel because it wasn't combusting thoroughly. And so he'd spent a year or two adjusting his firing technique, assuring that he didn't cram any more coal into the fire than absolutely necessary. Most firemen seemed to get their kicks from shooting drumstick-shaped plumes of black smoke high into the air, but why darken a perfectly clear sky, and in the process generate more dead ashes that they'd have to shake out later?

Work smarter instead of harder, the old heads were fond of saying.

Robert would rather work hard than not work at all, war or no war.

The train rumbled on past the large classification yard in East Deerfield to pause at the station in Greenfield, a couple of miles to the west, at the junction of the Fitchburg and Connecticut River divisions. As transfer passengers off the Connecticut Yankee boarded, a familiar holler caught Robert's attention as he checked the tender's axle bearings for overheats.

"Hey, Bobby-o!" The holler came from a man a year or two younger than Robert, garbed in a gleaming white Navy enlisted uniform, toting a somewhat less resplendent sea bag.

"We-e-ell, Stevie Greevey!" Robert pulled off a glove to shove out his still-filthy hand for a shake. "Been since the graduation bash on Green Island, how's the blue water been treating you?"

"Oh, pretty lousy up till the war broke out," Steve confessed. "After the Japs hit Pearl, I signed up for submarine school and went into an accelerated program. Just finished in May. What about you, weren't you gonna join up and get in the fight?"

"I was gonna," Robert shrugged. "But my brother is already a submariner, and I just saw my brother-in-law off to England with a bomber group. Figured seeing as I'm Two-B anyway, probably do better staying where I am to help 'em both out."

"Oh, no shit." Steve's eyes lit up at the mention of William. "What boat's your brother on?"

 _"Hammerjaw._ He's the executive officer and they're in the thick of it already."

"Exec, huh? One short of the big cheese. I just got assigned to the _Sabalo,_ m'self. She's on the building ways in New London now and I made gunner's mate second after I got her."

"Well, ain't you moving up in the world. They turn you loose for a few free days or something?"

"Or something. There's some kind of a SNAFU with our engineering plant, so they gave most of us a weekend pass until they get it sorted. Thought I'd hop back home for a couple of days and tend to some old....business."

Steve's voice trailed off as he saw Robert's eyes narrow, the deep frown that furrowed his old pal's face. Robert glanced briefly about to make sure no one was in earshot. Then he leaned on the tender, crossed his arms, and muttered conspiratorially: "You wouldn't by any chance have General Motors engines, would you?"

"No, we were supposed to, but...." Steve abruptly stopped speaking and stared at Robert. He was just about to resume when Magnussen leaned out of the Black Diamond's cab to interrupt.

 _"Bobby!"_ he shouted. "Haven't you got grates to shake or anything?"

"Ah, shit," Robert grunted. "I gotta get back to work. But listen, we're gonna stop to take on water and pick up electric helpers before we go into the tunnel. Catch back up with me then, willya?" He waved to Steve, loath to smudge the clean white uniform with a sooty pat, and hurried to the gangway.

"Not tryin' to get rid of me now, are you?" he asked as he climbed aboard.

"Just tryin' not to fill out a fuckin' delay report with 'no steam' and your name right next to it," Magnussen said tartly. "What was that all about, anyway?"

"That was an old school buddy." Robert grabbed the shaker bar and threw the firebox doors half open to monitor his progress. "To hear him tell it, this diesel engine debacle is worse than anyone thought. Even the submarines may be in trouble because of it." He rocked the grates at the bottom of the firebox gently, dropping all the dead ash from the coal bed without wasting too much of the fire's heat.

"It's a wonder the goddamned things haven't choked anyone to death hauling through the tunnel," Magnussen commented matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, you ain't shittin'. I'd like to be there when Hunter has a stroke 'cause his little pet project is off the table."

One hour, thirty miles, two tons of coal, and several thousand gallons of water later, the train reached the hamlet of Florida, just on the east side of the Hoosac Tunnel, to replenish its water and allow electric locomotives to pull it through the five-mile-long bore in the mountain. Steve was among the passengers who disembarked for a smoke break. After Robert had pulled the water spout over the tender's hatch and opened the valve, he surreptitiously dropped down the ladder on the back of the tender and beckoned for Steve to join him beside the water column. Here the upward rush of water would obscure their voices as the column itself would hide their faces from any lip-readers.

"Look, Bobby, I'm not supposed to tell you nothin' about a sub," Steve muttered intensely. "The battleships are all still on the bottom, we barely got any carriers still in operation - the submarines are _it._ We can't risk any secrets getting out, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"I know it, Stevie. My brother's been clear as a bell about it. But one thing he did tell me was that _his_ boat had engine problems, too. There could be some kind of sabotage operation happening here, and I think one of my division superintendents might be in it up to his fat ass."

"No shit, huh?" Steve said thoughtfully. "What do you want from me, then?"

"No top defense secrets or nothin'. But you said your boat was supposed to get GM engines."

"They're the best ones on the market. Trouble is, GM can't turn 'em out fast enough to fill all the orders from the Navy and the railroads. So we're in line to get ours from some outfit called Hooven-Owens-Rentschler. They've made engines for subs before, and they were fuckin' _junk._ But with GM booked as it is, they're all we can get."

"Like to see how they'd do making railroad engines," Robert scoffed. He glanced ahead to see the pair of electric helpers backing down the main line to couple to the front of the Black Diamond. "But that tells me everything I need to know."

"You said your brother's on the _Hammerjaw,_ right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, just between you, me, and the water spout, she did have engine problems - 'cause they built her with H.O.R.s, too, and any boat that ever ran with those goddamned things had trouble with 'em and you won't win a bet against it. We're gonna be in serious shit if we go to sea with those fuckers. I told you what I know, so anything you find out...."

"You got it," Robert vowed with a sharp nod. "And you know you can trust me to keep my mouth shut about it."

"Ever since you got between Jason Hammond and me in eighth grade. You said a boss of yours might be involved in this?"

"Even if he ain't, he's gonna make life a damn sight easier for them that are." With that, Robert pushed away from the water column and scampered back up to the tender deck to check on the water level.

In a few more minutes, the tender was full to the brim, all passengers were back on board, Robert had rid the fire of a few more pounds of ash, and the electric helpers were easing the slack out of the couplers. Another minute and they thrummed their way into the east portal of the fabled, reputedly haunted Hoosac Tunnel. With the helpers taking up the load, all Robert had to do was avoid making smoke as he kept the fire smoldering and the water high enough in the boiler to cover all heating surfaces - even when they exited the tunnel, it would be downgrade almost all the way to the New York state line. Still, he had more to do than he would on some reeking diesel: but he had plenty of time to sit in his seat and think things over as the electrics rumbled on upgrade toward the central ventilation shaft.

The tunnel was pitch dark, its walls caked with soot, except for a few spots where groundwater dribbling from the ceiling washed off the soot to expose bare rock. It had the unfortunate side effect of softening the roadbed, creating low spots on the track over which the Black Diamond yawed and rocked precariously, threatening to derail. The only light in the cab now came from the gauge lights and the occasional red flicker from the fire doors. Robert sat in silence, scratching his stubbled jaw. To think that just a few days prior, he'd tossed around the idea of asking Elizabeth to sabotage the new diesels as they arrived. But that would make her no better than Hunter or whoever else was in on this. It had only just occurred to Robert that some kind of extensive foreign plot to sabotage submarine - and railroad - engines was being executed, and Hunter was but an unwitting party to it. And only his big sister had the wherewithal to find out more.

The twin white plates affixed to the wall of the tunnel caught Robert's eye - they were almost up to the crest of the grade and the center shaft above it. A few seconds later, the helpers cut off power and switched to regenerative braking mode to control the train's momentum on the downgrade to the town of North Adams at the other end. Robert could already see the light from the west portal up ahead, still over two miles distant. For once the tunnel wasn't so clogged with smoke and fog as to obscure the light completely.

It seemed oddly metaphorical for the clarity with which he now saw the entire picture.

Did he and Elizabeth now have a chance to make a _real_ difference? To stop some kind of chain reaction from undermining the war effort and endangering the lives of William and his fellow submariners at the same time?

Better to ask, did they have the time to find out?

One thing was for sure, he would have a hell of a time keeping it under his hat until he had proof.

* * *

Robert was careful to point out Elizabeth's unique position to her when she met him outside the roundhouse two mornings later, before he set out for home. She kept it as close as she could afford to the front of her mind after the foreman had doled out the day's assignments, sending Elizabeth to clean the rods and running gear of a K-8 class Consolidation due to haul a wayfreight out toward Hoosick Junction later in the day. The catch was, how to make it seem casual, like she had no real interest in the dieselization program or in Hunter's ruthless mismanagement as a contributing factor?

The answer, as it turned out, came easier than expected: Hunter himself was clomping about the roundhouse, ranting off to the foreman a list of the steam power that would be first to go when the road diesels arrived.

Ewan Hunter was almost as wide as he was tall, and his mustache bore a disturbing resemblance to Hitler's. As the deputy superintendent of the Fitchburg Division in charge of motive power and rolling stock, he had an obnoxious, abrasive attitude to complement his appearance. You couldn't miss his presence if you tried - he smelled like the exposed underbelly of a hippopotamus, and the reek could pierce the thickest curtain of coal smoke. Even if you couldn't smell him, there was no mistaking his voice, rocky and raspy and irritating as it was from twenty years of chain smoking. When he came within Elizabeth's earshot, she pretended to ignore him and went about polishing her engine's rods.

"....traffic keeps going the way it is, anything with ten wheels or less is gonna be basically useless," Hunter was saying around a cigarette butt. "The Consols and the Trailers'll be worth more as scrap metal than even short line power. The Baltimore and Ohio got a head start on their diesel fleet right before the war started, and you oughta see what it's done for their time freight performance to believe it."

"Probably take a few weeks of test runs on the branch lines to make sure the tracks can handle 'em - "

"We'll bump the S-ones and Pacifics off to the branch lines and transfer jobs," Hunter interrupted as if the foreman hadn't even spoken. "Get rid of the Limas altogether along with these little fucking piglets, and let Barringer worry about bringin' the main line up to snuff. Maybe get some of these damn broads outa my roundhouses while we're at it."

The two men were walking around the front of the engine by the time that popped out, and Hunter evidently wouldn't believe or care whether or not Elizabeth overheard him. She bit down a retort and followed them, cotton waste in one hand and cosmoline bucket in the other. Maybe it was just as well Hunter harbored such obvious contempt for women in the roundhouse - he wouldn't even figure Elizabeth for eavesdropping.

"Oh, fuck the War Production Board!" Hunter spat in reply to the foreman the next time Elizabeth could hear him. "Let 'em send someone to watch the fireworks next time we get a set of demonstrators in and haulin' up the Williamstown grade. They'll see things our way, soon's they see what them growlers can do for the country as well as us."

"Well, if you think so," the foreman said with more than a twinge of doubt in his tone. "Just cross your fingers we don't have a breakdown like we did with that E-six last Monday."

"Wouldn't surprise me if one of these fuckin' bottom feeders sabotaged it," Hunter growled, making a directionless gesture. Together they moved off, their voices quickly obscured by blowers, turbogenerators and clanking metal.

Elizabeth couldn't take a chance following them any further. She stood rock-still, holding her cotton waste motionless against her engine's eccentric rod. Hunter must seriously think he was the only one who suspected sabotage. If he was knowingly in on the scheme she and Robert suspected, would he actually try to deflect the blame for diesel failures on enginemen he particularly detested?

She asked Robert that very question when she knocked off that afternoon and crossed paths with him on his way to the ready track - he'd reported right at his rest time to fire a fast freight train, its cargo bound for the navy yards in Boston and Portsmouth.

"Ah, that bastard," Robert hissed. "Doesn't give a shit who he's gotta stomp on to get ahead, does he?"

"He must have one hell of an ace in the hole if he thinks he can defy the War Production Board to get what he wants," Elizabeth pointed out. "Can't you figure some way to trip him up?"

"What am I supposed to do? If I try to trip him up, we're both fucked, and if I don't, Billy and Stevie are both fucked."

"Well, we've got to figure something out," Elizabeth insisted. "You asked me to keep my ears open, and I heard what I heard. But you've got a better chance of getting close to him - he won't even acknowledge my existence except to call me 'that damn broad over there'."

Robert stared at her askance. "Are you asking me to do what I think you're asking me to do?"

"Billy would ask you. Hell, I think Roosevelt himself would ask you if he knew what that self-serving son of a bitch is up to. God and country, Bobby - your friend, my husband, and our brother, that's what we're both here for. Hunter is only here for Ewan Hunter and his own stock in the railroad."

"Well...." Robert sighed as it was borne upon him what he had to do. "That doesn't leave me with much of a future, but it doesn't leave me with much of a choice either. You remember how Billy looked out for the rest of us when we were kids."

"I remember better how he helped to keep us on our feet during the Depression," Elizabeth said with a wistful smile.

"I don't think even _he_ knows how much we owe him. So I sure as hell ain't gonna let Hunter put the screws to him, wherever he is."


End file.
